Dead Money

by Srinath Adiga

  “Do you know what’s happening while we’re flogging Afterlife Dollar investments? People out there think this toxic piece of shit is real. Because of us,” Theo said.

  The Colombian shrugged. “People believe what they want to believe.”

  “I’m curious. What does a man like you believe? I’m going out on a limb and assuming you don’t believe in a god?”

  “I’d rather believe in the devil. He gave us rock music, and no one’s ever killed anyone in his name.”

  Theo gave a wry smile. Another punch line. That’s probably what he did in his spare time. Stand in the front of the mirror and crank out dialogue.

  “I also believe when opportunity comes knocking, you answer the door. And that morality is absolute. You can’t cherry-pick when you choose to apply it. Do you think all those companies you’ve been investing in all these years are run by Mother Teresas?”

  “I don’t,” Theo said. “But when there’s no black and white, you just have to draw a line at an acceptable shade of grey.”

  “You think I’m an asshole, don’t you?” Miguel snarled.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But that’s what you think. Let me tell you something. Nice people make you feel warm and fuzzy, but assholes get the job done. That’s a historical fact. Hitler. Asshole extraordinaire, but didn’t he get Germany out of the worst depression in history? Ditto for Stalin. If it weren’t for the gulags, Russia would be a country of peasants. If I didn’t do what I did, this company would be in the scrap heap.”

  “You’re proudly comparing yourself to two of the biggest mass murderers in history?” Theo gaped.

  “I get the job done.” Miguel pounded the desk, causing the photo to topple. The one in which he’d proudly posed after shooting a defenseless animal.

  What a sad fucker, Theo thought as he watched the Colombian stand the photo upright and fuss over it as if it were a treasured family picture. The guy had nothing, apart from a big ego and a repertoire of one-liners. What did you say to someone like that? You might as well be talking to a piece of flat-pack furniture.

  On that note, Theo decided that it was time to go. There was no need for him to sit there and listen to this crap. Not when he’d been fired.

  “Oh, so now you want to leave?” Miguel whined when he saw Theo rise. “Aren’t you at least going to thank me?”

  “For what?” Theo snorted.

  “The board wanted to get the lawyers involved. But I said we don’t need to fuck you any more than you’ve already fucked yourself.”

  Of course. Now it made sense. He’d been summoned not for threat of legal action but because the Colombian wanted his dick stroked one last time. Well, fuck you, Miguel. Stroke your own dick, or get one of your Ninjas to do it for you.

  “Actually, there is one thing I should thank you for,” Theo said. “The Grim Reaper costume. That was your suggestion.”

  After leaving Miguel’s office, he was escorted to the thirteenth floor, where a stern-looking HR woman gave him his termination papers and a cardboard box containing all his things. He accepted them with a sarcastic thanks.

  As he walked past the reception area and stepped through the sliding doors, there was no urge to look over his shoulder for one last glance at the office he’d worked in for seven years. There was nothing to look back at.

  The lift deposited him in the lobby, where he noticed a flurry of activity. A security guard barked at his walkie-talkie, gesturing furiously. A few others rushed toward the entrance. Theo shrugged and carried on at a leisurely pace.

  When he approached the shopping arcade, he noticed that the cafe staff were all at the window, looking at something. He couldn’t see what it was, as their bodies blocked his view.

  He went past them, through the revolving doors. As soon as he stepped outside, the box fell from his hand.

  From the billboard at Amsterdam Zuid station to the columns of the ring road flyover, his entire field of vision was enveloped in black. They were pouring in from everywhere: the ramp from the station, steps descending from the bus stops, streets that came from the city in the north and Zuidas in the south. Inky tributaries converging from all directions and filling every inch of available space in the square.

  Hundreds of Grim Reapers shouting, “GET OFF MY TURF!”

  13.

  THE DOORBELL RANG TWICE. IN THE CORRIDOR, Theo was quiet and still, as if hiding from a debt collector. He was convinced it was the HR lady from work, bearing a message from Miguel. Or worse, the Colombian himself, there to do the honors.

  I’ve changed my mind. We’re going to sue your ass to kingdom come.

  Theo glanced nervously at the silhouette in the frosted door panel, silently commanding it to go away.

  The bell rang again. This time, the finger stayed pressed on it.

  He drew breath and opened the door gingerly.

  “Mara!” he exclaimed, both surprised and relieved when he saw her parka-clad figure on his doorstep.

  “Have you seen the news?” Her eyes shone with excitement.

  “What news?”

  She pushed past him and entered his house.

  “Your shoes!” he cried as she stamped muddy footprints on the pristine floorboards. “Leave your filthy shoes outside.”

  But she marched straight to the living room and stood beside the coffee table, confounded by his array of remotes.

  “Which one’s for the TV?”

  He picked up the silver wand and pointed it at the wall. The big-screen TV lit up with the news broadcast:

  “At first glance, this boisterous gathering of Grim Reapers on this chilly New York morning might look like a spillover from the Halloween weekend. However, it seems these people are here not to play trick or treat, but to send a message to Wall Street.”

  Theo stared open-mouthed at the army of placard-bearing Grim Reapers gathered in the forecourt of the neoclassical New York Stock Exchange building. It was hard to estimate their numbers, but they pretty much filled the screen, all shouting, “Get off my turf!”

  His line.

  The news report continued. “The protests, inspired by a viral video from an Amsterdam-based asset manager, target Afterlife Dollar investments. Similar scenes are being reported in the financial districts of London, Paris, Frankfurt, Hong Kong and Tokyo.”

  Theo fell onto the sofa. “This is … insane,” he stammered.

  “Tell me about it. I had to beg and plead just to get half a dozen people to attend a protest last week. And you? You get drunk, post a video and this happens,” she said with a smattering of envy in her voice.

  “Wasn’t my intention. Hell, I can’t even remember making the video.”

  “How can you not remember?”

  Theo shrugged. It was a question he’d asked himself time and again. Writing a script, memorizing it, filming, editing. All tasks requiring considerable skill and application. How could all this have occurred when he was non compos mentis?

  “You must join us,” she said, gripping his arm.

  “Are you crazy?” He shook her away. “Perhaps you forget who I am. A banker. I’m the one you protest against.”

  “Not anymore. Didn’t they fire you?” She sniggered.

  “Go away.” He glared at her.

  “As you wish. There’s a protest in Dam Square tomorrow. Let me know if you want to join the party you started.”

  She rose and left the room. He listened to her trailing footsteps and sighed. The video. The sacking. And now this. It was as if he were on a merry-go-round and the person operating it had collapsed in the booth.

  Something in the corner of his vision caught his eye.

  “Mara!” he shouted when he noticed muddy boot prints all over his white rug.

  AS AFTERNOON TURNED to evening, the darkening sky sucked away the optimism from earlier in the day. Theo hunched in his study, dealing with the realities of being unemployed. The lamp shone a pale light on a desk blanketed by bank statements, property pap
ers, share certificates and a host of other documents.

  For someone who advised companies what to do with their money, his own finances were a mess. He spent the next couple of hours trying to sort through them, organizing papers into orderly piles, labelling them with color-coded sticky notes.

  The exercise reminded him of the time he had to tidy up his father’s finances after his death. He remembered the shock upon seeing the old man’s bank book. The balance was eight hundred twenty-seven euro, forty-one cents. Not even a grand. And a month prior to that, Theo had described a hundred-and-fifty-thousand-euro bonus as piddly.

  Yet his problem right this moment wasn’t one of perspective, but liquidity. Most of his money was tied up in investments: two flats in Grachtengordel and one in Oud-West, not to mention the house he was living in, and shareholdings including the uninvested options in Alpha Capital that he’d been bizarrely allowed to retain.

  There was contingency cash in the bank, the equivalent of six months’ expenses, but he could stretch that to nine if he lived frugally. Was that enough time to find another job? He recalled Miguel’s parting words to him:

  We don’t need to fuck you any more than you’ve already fucked yourself.

  The industry didn’t look too kindly upon whistleblowers and protestors. The video was bound to be a stain on his resume. The question was just how bad a stain.

  What if the worst happened? What if he never got another job? Ever? What was he going to do?

  Theo swallowed.

  This job was his life. Ever since he was a kid, it was all he’d wanted to do. While most boys dreamed of flying planes or driving fire trucks, he dreamt of working in a bank. Sad, but true. This choice was guided partly by his precocious numerical ability. And then, there was Mr. De Graaf, a stockbroker whose larger-than-life figure and purring Lamborghini stirred something in little Theo’s breast. Each time Mr. De Graaf visited his father’s pottery studio, they played a game. Mr. De Graaf would lower himself to Theo’s height and pose a math question: What is four hundred seventy-five divided by thirteen? If a farmer had one hundred forty-four cows and he wanted to divide these among his five sons such that the eldest one got one more than the second who got one more than the third and so on, how many cows would each get?

  And each time Theo answered correctly, Mr. De Graaf would reward him with some fancy American chocolate bar, while his father stood to one side, frowning. It seemed Mr. De Graaf’s custom was welcome but not his influence. Perceptive for his age, Theo had learnt that his father could moan all he wanted, but the months that Mr. De Graaf didn’t visit, they ate potatoes for dinner.

  Then one day, Mr. De Graaf asked him a question: “If there are ten cookies in a jar and each costs two guilders, how much would I pay for the entire jar?”

  “Twenty,” Theo answered immediately, his hand outstretched in expectation of an easily earned chocolate bar.

  “Wrong. The correct answer is, ‘It depends,’” Mr. De Graaf said.

  Theo’s face shrank with disappointment. “Depends on what?”

  “Many things. If the cookies have been sitting in the jar for a long time and the shopkeeper’s keen to get rid of them before they turn soggy, he might give them to you for a discount, maybe ten guilders instead of twenty. On the other hand, if there’s another boy in the shop who wants the cookies as much as you, the shopkeeper might ask for thirty or forty or fifty. Depends on how badly you want them or, more importantly, how much you don’t want the other boy to have them. Mathematics is meaningless without an understanding of human nature. Combine the two and the world is yours,” Mr. De Graaf said, patting a wonder-struck Theo’s cheek. His first lesson on the markets, at the age of eight.

  That night, it wasn’t his mother’s stentorian snores drilling through the thin walls that had kept him awake. Rather it was Mr. De Graaf’s baritone words, which seemed to have carved a permanent place in his ears.

  But now, at the age of thirty-one, he had come to realize that the world would never be his. Perhaps because now he understood human nature only too well.

  14.

  MARA’S FLAT WAS IN THE LABYRINTH OF RED prewar blocks of De Baarsjes. Yet another neighborhood being trimmed of its working-class edges, with trendy cafes and microbreweries sprouting amidst kebab shops and Surinamese eateries. Theo stood outside her door, looking like a Chinese lucky cat with his fist hanging in the air as he posed a question one was entitled to before committing to an irrevocable step.

  What the hell am I doing?

  One by one, he enumerated all the reasons that had brought him there. There was, of course, the guilt that had sparked the nightmares in the first place. Once the initial shock and embarrassment had passed, a part of him also felt strangely proud of what he’d created. A little puffing of the chest every time he turned on the news and saw a group of people in Grim Reaper costumes protesting in some corner of the globe. But what got him over the line was something completely unexpected. It had occurred the night before, when he saw the data. It excited the strategist in him so much he imported it into a presentation on his laptop, which now hung from his shoulder.

  Finally, the fist knocked. Mara appeared in the doorway, her long, thin face drawn by a strange look. It was as if she was trying to smile at him, but her muscles, constrained by force of habit, wouldn’t permit it.

  She stood to one side. “Come on in.”

  Nothing symbolized how much his life had changed more than this moment: Mara, his archenemy, letting him into her flat.

  He followed her through a short corridor. The smell that came at him was like a punch in the face. A thick funk of damp, sweat, cooking and God knew what else. The living room was packed like an antiques yard. Sofa, bookcase, TV cabinet, chest of drawers, another shelf, another chest of drawers, church organ, shisha pipe, wood-carved totem, bronze Buddha cheek-by-jowl with a cigar-store Indian. Then, he noticed a hierarchy in this dizzying mess. A subsidiary clutter under the master one, hundreds of knickknacks colonizing every available surface: shelves, chest of drawers, organ.

  He stopped to peruse some of the objects on display: a small porcelain Delft clog, a miniature windmill, some random action figures including a man in a sausage costume, a scary-looking clown, Matchbox cars, a couple of teddy bears, a model helicopter with one blade missing, a pair of Chinese medicine balls, a Viennese music box, a dozen or so ashtrays—bizarre, considering that of all the smells that seemed to be prospering in this flat, tobacco wasn’t one of them. He shook his head. How could anyone live like this? For someone who worshipped at the altar of minimalism and space, this was nothing short of hell.

  He walked through the doorway, entering a rundown kitchen that evoked a nostalgia for the seventies. A dozen or so people were seated around a long oval table, a real motley bunch: students burning with idealism, silver-haired retirees looking for a pastime, a few hippy types and some working professionals, more women than men.

  “Look who’s here, everybody,” Mara said, displaying him proudly like a trophy.

  Faces turned and looked, as if he were some kind of a celebrity.

  “Get off my turf,” someone said, prompting an outburst of giggles. Not used to this attention, he cringed.

  Chairs scraped as everyone shuffled to make room for him. Theo sat between a perky redhead and a man who looked like an ex-cop. He placed his laptop bag on the floor, beside his feet.

  “I’d like to begin by welcoming Theo,” Mara said from the other end of the table. “As you all know, his video has caused a real storm. I’m delighted that he’s said yes to coming to the meeting. His involvement is a big boost—”

  “Objection.”

  The voice belonged to a man who looked like he lived in a log cabin in the woods: red lumberjack shirt; long, unkempt hair; a sullen face under a straw-colored beard.

  His remark triggered a wave of eye rolls and exasperated sighs around the table.

  “Viktor. For God’s sake. Stop being a problem child,” the silver
-haired woman next to him chided.

  “What? Am I the only one who cares about the rules?” Viktor retorted.

  “What rules?” Mara asked.

  “Members have to be in the organization for at least two years before they can be invited to the elders’ meeting.”

  “I didn’t know that was even a rule,” the redhead next to Theo remarked.

  “Yes. That is a rule.” Viktor glared. “It exists to prevent government agents from infiltrating our group.”

  Theo laughed. Him? A James-Bond-type secret agent?

  The ridiculous comment drew ire from others in the group, who once again rushed to his defense.

  “Are you serious? Have you been watching the news?” a young woman with dark hair snapped.

  “Do you know how many people are protesting because of him?” Mara scowled.

  Viktor folded his arms and raised his chin. “I don’t care.”

  “You don’t care?” Mara scoffed. “Okay. How many people did you bring to the protest last month?” Theo watched with a wry smile, savoring the novelty of having her in his corner.

  “That’s not my fault,” moaned Viktor. “No one gives a shit about us, because we’ve turned into a bunch of pussies. Too scared to create controversy.”

  “Controversy?” the fiery redhead beside Theo spat. “Like covering the gates of the parliament house with toilet paper? That really worked, didn’t it?”

  Viktor yelled at her to piss off. She yelled back. Others joined in. As the meeting tumbled into chaos, Theo shook his head.

  What am I doing here?

  Suddenly, a fist pounded the table.

  “SHUT UP. SHUT UP NOW!” A booming voice shook the room.

  Theo flinched. It was the man next to him, the one who looked like an ex-cop with his stern blue eyes, closely cropped silver hair, face colored by a rush of blood.

  The tap dripped as a hush fell on the room.

  “You should be ashamed of yourselves. Behaving like a bunch of schoolchildren,” the man scolded the bowed heads around the table. “I’m surprised Theo hasn’t walked away in disgust. Now, let’s do this the civilized way, shall we? Those in favor of Theo being here, raise your hands.”