The Rare Event

by P D Singer

  Ricky jerked away and turned. “Get this through your head—what happened the other night never happens again.”

  Logan pulled back. “Right, Ricky.” But he didn’t look sorry enough, or scared enough—he licked his lips.

  “You fucked me once. Never again.” White heat grew in him; Ricky snarled, “You could have been anyone in the world and it would have meant the same.”

  “Even Jon?”

  A handful of Logan’s shirt and tie let Ricky could drag the little cazzone close and get into his face. “He’s Mr. Hogenboom to you.” Ricky didn’t care that a drop of spit flew out. “I’m Mr. Santeramo, and you, pal, were a handy toy.” He tossed Logan back into his chair, sending him rolling backward across the floor. “Now be an analyst. And if you give Jon any crap about the other night, one word, one wink, anything, I’ll make sure you aren’t even that. Capisce?”

  “Right, sorry, Ricky, sorry.” He changed his tune before Ricky had to hit him. “Sorry, Mr. Santeramo.” Logan hunched small in the chair.

  “Same thing if you’ve fucked me with your work.” Ricky pulled back his temper enough to drop the Italian—he’d been pissed enough to sound like his father for a minute. “You won’t be working here long.”

  Ricky opened the files on the thumb drive, and the two got down to uneasy business.

  “DO WE have our put menu worked out?” Dwight watched Jon add a few numbers to his spreadsheet. He hadn’t touched the computer in ten minutes or so, and he wasn’t nearly happy enough to be contemplating profits. Brooding over Ricky, no doubt. Maybe Lover’s Spat 1.2 level four would be equally interesting, and less expensive for the pawn. He pushed his new glasses up his nose and looked at the monitor.

  “Yes. I think so.” Jon visibly shook himself. “I’ll need to put this one together myself; it won’t be a one-phone-call transaction. Why don’t you get out and do something else for a bit? You don’t have to sit and listen.”

  “Okay.” Dwight would go back to his desk and play with more numbers, and maybe someone would comment on his new look. Preferably someone who wasn’t Logan—he would only sneer at Dwight’s attempts at self-improvement. He was still stiff from the training session on Saturday, but that hadn’t kept him from exercising again yesterday and some this morning. It was too soon to hope for a change in the fit of his pants, but he’d passed on the salty snacks all weekend and it should start happening soon. Right?

  Dwight flipped on the group Bloomberg and sat down to tune it to the channels he wanted. That cute quantitative analyst from Araucaria, the big hedge fund down the hall, wandered over from where he’d been chatting with Vaughn. “Hunting for what?”

  He really shouldn't tell the competition what they were looking at: it might drive the prices the wrong direction. “General information on building.”

  “Housing starts have dropped every month since June.” Dr. Iggy hitched his butt onto the desk. He didn’t take up a lot of room; at around five feet seven and built sparely, he left plenty of space for the legal pad and newspapers strewing the desktop. Funny how the little rectangular wire rims didn’t correct his vision so well—Iggy was always leaning over Dwight to read, and he had to balance himself with a hand on Dwight’s shoulder. Dwight liked that warm hand, but he didn’t want to read too much into it. Right now, Iggy’s knee was very close to Dwight’s chest.

  “Are you looking into that industry?” Dwight looked up, enjoying what he saw. Medium-brown curls caught into a ponytail that only a quant could get away with exposed the sharp cheekbones and brown eyes, and his tie was pulled loosely away from the collar of the French blue shirt. The collar points were the right type for the knot of the tie—Dwight allowed himself a moment of pleasure for recalling that, and another that he was dressed equally properly, at last.

  “Some. A lot of stocks going the other way from the underlying business, have you noticed?” Dr. Iggy swung his foot back and forth, bumping Dwight’s chair. “Sorry.”

  “It could recover, you never know.” Dwight didn’t really want to expose how much research he’d put into this subject, though all of a sudden looking like an idiot to this man seemed really unpleasant. Bad enough to feel like the Jolly Green Giant next to Iggy, although looking up like this evened that out.

  “True, how do you know what you know? And how do you know that you know it? And isn’t there always the possibility of it being refuted?” Suddenly Dr. Iggy colored. “Sorry, I did my doctoral dissertation on Karl Popper’s effects on economics; the philosophy gets away from me at inopportune moments. Hence the nickname.”

  “Erm, Iggy Popper?” Suddenly being named Dwight didn’t seem so bad.

  “Yeah.” Dr. Iggy laughed. “I’ve had four years to get used to it.”

  Before Dwight could ask his real name, though, Dr. Iggy was on his feet. “I’d better get back before someone thinks I’ve slipped my leash. Hey, like the glasses.” And then he was a slight figure hurrying out the double glass doors into the hall.

  So someone did notice. Dwight leaned back in the chair, hands behind his head and feet on the desk, to watch financial news with only half his attention.

  “HERE’S what I want, Mitch—six-month puts at 30, 25, and 20 on NovaFin, a thousand contracts on each.” Jon had called a friend at a trading desk at an outside broker, one who could put together buyer and seller for these rights to trade. The other end of this trade might be someone down the hall at Dr. Iggy’s fund or another, closer to the heart of Wall Street, but Jon would never know who unless someone mentioned it at a party or blew up.

  “Whoa, Jon,” Mitch choked. “What do you know that I don’t know? NovaFin’s been heading steadily up, it’s around sixty dollars now.”

  “It certainly is, but we’ve been doing the research, and we don’t like it as much as some other people do.” One of them was down the hall, seething, but Jon wouldn’t spend a thought on Ricky at the moment—this was business.

  “This is close to half a million bucks’ worth of dislike.” This was why Jon had called Mitch; he could whip the numbers out in mere heartbeats.

  “Just wait ’til you hear what else I don’t like and how much I don’t like it.” Jon grinned wolfishly. “I’m going to spend more than that, but I’m going to spread the hate around.”

  “You want to tell me now, or after I deliver the first set?” Mitch’s voice was thick. Was he actually drooling?

  “Get me a good price on the first lot and I’ll tell you more. I owe Danielle over at Taugasack a couple of juicy trades.” Nothing like a little competition to keep the costs down.

  “I might do better if I was hunting for a couple of different contracts,” Mitch wheedled.

  “Think of it as a challenge,” Jon advised him. “Get to work.” He hung up and dialed another number after making a note on his spreadsheet. “Hey, Danielle, I want six-month puts on WideWest Financial, a thousand each at 25, 20, and 15. Yes, darling, I am taking aim at the precious pet of Wall Street; no, darling, I haven’t lost my mind. Mitch will take my money without questioning my sanity, you know….”

  By the end of the day, Jon had spent close to three million dollars on the put contracts, all betting that the stock prices would drop. He’d effectively shorted the stocks by using the options, but with only a fraction of the risk if the prices climbed for a while. Edgar would growl at the trades being out of the money, but the time value would keep the old pervert from being able to say he’d screwed up. Jon could always point to the calendar, saying, “A lot could happen in four months,” or three, or one. If he’d bet too soon and things didn’t fall apart before the third week of March when his puts expired, well, that was $3 million for Edgar to be upset about.

  But now, to wait.

  And while he waited, he put in the promised call to the financial advisor who watched over the Hogenboom fortunes. Tonight he could reassure his mother that he’d looked after his own interests.

  THE housekeeper cleared away the fourth plate when Jon explained that Ri
cky wouldn’t be joining them at dinner, and there was no fifth plate.

  “Davis will be having a sandwich at his desk if he gets anything at all,” Jessica mused between bites of sea bass in mango salsa. “His project had something come up, and he’ll be burning some midnight oil. But why isn’t Ricky with us?”

  Jon put his fork down rather abruptly—the plate contained nothing that wouldn’t taste like ashes now. “We—came to a parting of the ways. And I don’t want to talk about why.” Even with closed eyes and bent head, he could see his parents meeting each other’s glances with concern, as they always had when he’d brought them his troubles, or part of them.

  “I’m sorry, dear.” He could feel his mother’s small hand on his own, and felt his father shift in his chair.

  “Is it something that we should hunt him down and bankrupt him for?” Chaz asked after clearing his throat twice.

  Jon shook his head. “At the rate he’s going, he’ll take care of that himself.” Why had he not put the stop-loss order on Lasker Homes, or WideWest, whichever was the bigger position? Intens was an unknown risk, subject to a Black Swan event but not headed for the certain fall. Why did Ricky not protect himself? Jon couldn’t quite shake his sense of responsibility for his lover’s, no, his ex-lover’s safety.

  Chaz cut to the chase. “Is there any risk that he’ll take you down with him?”

  “Me personally, no.” Jon beseeched his father with his eyes to let it drop. “The fund, not down, but it could hurt. Let’s talk about something else.” He pushed the mango off the fish but didn’t eat any.

  “This may not be an improvement, but Spencer called,” Jessica offered. Chaz looked at her sharply, and Jon recalled what his father had said the other night. “He sounded rather strange.”

  “What did he want?” The dull ache grew in Jon’s gut.

  “Your phone number. He said he’d been looking at wedding pictures and wanted to talk.” Jessica folded her napkin and laid it next to her plate. “I told him I’d ask you first, and he promised to call back.”

  Spencer was right not to expect Jon to pick up the phone, not to expect a lunge at a hope. “If he still wants it, yes, that’s fine.”

  “Are you sure?” Chaz looked intently into Jon’s face. “After what you said the other night?”

  “If he was looking at wedding pictures before he called, something’s changed. It’s okay.” Jon knew there had been more than a few time-stamped shots of him passing a roll of tissue around a captive groomsman. Of course, Davis had said a great deal the other day, and that had changed things too.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “THAT’S one hell of a big bet to have go wrong, Jon.”

  Jon knew he’d have to justify his trade to Edgar at Tuesday’s morning meeting, but it was done, set, and for the next six months all he had to do was pick the moment to exercise his options. “If we’re wrong, and I don’t think we are, the total loss is limited to that three mil. Not like a leveraged long position—that goes bad and the downside could be everything.”

  “We don’t ride positions down to nothing around here, do we, boys and girls?” Edgar gave the assembled staff the gimlet eye. “And we protect ourselves, don’t we?” The staff, scattered among the desks on the central trading floor, nodded wisely.

  Ricky pursed his lips and took a particularly vicious stab at his drawing pad, balanced against the long leg propped on Logan’s desk. Jon felt the pencil might have been aimed for his own eye, now that he’d maneuvered the boss into telling Ricky to do what he should have done without prompting.

  “Lasker’s up since I bought it, and so’s WideWest. And CertinBuild. Guess I’ll have to make enough to cover Jon’s expired options. I better buy more.” He jabbed again at the paper without looking up.

  “Knock yourself out, Ricky, but be ready to grab your profit and run, because up isn’t the only direction those stocks will go.” Getting him to cover his ass was a lost cause for right now; getting him to pull out before the top and its inevitable decline was the best Jon could hope for.

  Damn, this was devolving into a fight already. Ricky looked up with fire in his eyes. “You’re so sure.”

  “Yeah. I am.” Folding his arms across his chest, Jon stared across the room.

  “I thought I told you boys to hash this out and get your strategies together.” Edgar glared from one to the other. He poked his finger three times, hard, toward Jon’s door. “Don’t come out of that office until you have a plan.” Neither trader moved. “Go. Now.” He jabbed again at the office.

  Jon went, shoulders back and head high. If he was going to have another closed-door fight with Ricky, he had no reason now to try to balance a lover’s concern with that of a colleague. It wouldn’t make a bit of difference to his plans for Friday nights anymore.

  The door slammed behind him.

  “Now you want to make me look like an ass to the boss?” Ricky breathed through bared teeth.

  Jon turned around and hitched his hip against his desk. “You’re doing fine with that on your own. You don’t need my help.”

  “Damned right I don’t.”

  “You do, Ricky, just not with that. Would it kill you to take some good advice and cover your ass?”

  “My ass doesn’t need covering. You have way too much advice about what to do with my ass. I’m doing fine.” His eyes flashed from beneath the neatly groomed black brows.

  “You’re lucky is what you are, Ricky.” Jon wouldn’t budge. “Luck can turn. It’s random. You cover yourself.”

  “If it’s so random, I wouldn’t have been this profitable for the last six years.” If Ricky was a dragon, the office would be full of brimstone fumes by now.

  “Perfectly possible, Ricky. Luck is good, luck and good planning is better.” They’d had bits of this talk before, but Jon had backed off before Ricky had grown this angry. He had no reason to back off now, even in the face of Ricky’s spat-out “Oh?”

  “Yes. If you have a thousand traders, and half of them are profitable the first year, just by luck, and you fire the unprofitable, the unlucky, you have five hundred, and the next year you have two hundred fifty, and you keep doing that, after five years there are thirty-two very lucky, profitable traders left. Just by luck.” Jon didn’t think it was entirely out of the realm of possibility that Wall Street could be populated that way.

  “As long as I’m one of the thirty-two, who cares?” Ricky worked his hands, as if he’d like to make his point physically.

  “You’re more likely to be one of the thirty-two if you’re not operating on luck. Ricky….” Jon now softened his tone, wanting to be heard, not fought with. “Rare events happen; how many times have we seen ‘ten-sigma’ events? That should mean that it happens once in the entire life of the universe. Instead, it’s every few years, have you noticed? Then everyone acts all surprised, except for the people who prepare for it, and they end up happy. How many traders have a ten-year career, Ricky?” Jon wasn’t asking a rhetorical question.

  “I have no idea.” Ricky didn’t respond as if it was a real question. Jon didn’t care.

  “Less than 10 percent. Some of them have to be good, or work for tolerant bosses, because that random example gives you only one trader left after ten years if it’s only luck. Being good means you prepared for the Black Swan events.” Jon wouldn’t implore. He was done imploring—he was done asking Ricky to do anything. He’d tell him, lay it out. “They aren’t all that rare.”

  “There’re black swans all over the place; why do you keep using that stupid example?” Ricky tried to pace in the small office but finally pulled out Dwight’s chair and sat down hard enough to creak the casters. He leaned back, one ankle crossed over his knee, displaying himself and his confidence.

  It was a view Jon would have drunk in not so long ago. He wouldn’t look at anything but Ricky’s face. “That’s my point. ‘Rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno.’” He translated, “‘A rare bird in the lands, and very like a
black swan’, and Juvenal said it because it was something that had never been seen in Europe, from Roman times to about 1700. All everyone saw was white swans, which wasn’t the same as every swan everywhere was white; it just meant that no one had seen a black swan yet. It wasn’t a certainty. When Europeans got to Australia—lo and behold, a whole continent full of black swans! Now they’re all over the world and no one remembers why the saying existed in the first place, even though it’s a very important concept in probability theory. And reality. My point, Ricky, is that shit happens and you aren’t taking that into account.” Jon shifted from the desk to the chair.

  “What would you have me do?” Ricky snarled. “And are you going to rat me out to Edgar if what I do doesn’t suit you?”

  “I’m not going to rat you out; I don’t have to. He’ll check, after this, so what you do is up to you. Ricky, who do you think is going to be hurt worst if it goes bad?” Jon had used his “speaking to a lover” voice without realizing it until the last word left his lips.

  “Edgar.” Ricky snorted. “He takes it right in his fat ass. With the rest of the investors, but him worst.”

  “He loses money. What do you lose?” If Ricky would think, Jon would use his persuasion any way he could—his voice remained soft.

  Ricky cut himself short. “My—”

  “Your previously accrued bonuses that are still invested here, your job, your prospects of a job in finance, because he’s vindictive. He’ll make sure the closest you end up to big money again is as the driver of an armored car.” Compared to all those things, small matters like the fortunes and security of his colleagues didn’t bear mentioning, so Jon didn’t. “Lose any noticeable chunk of ten million borrowed dollars, and he’ll find a way of making you pay it back, personally.”