Terror on Wall Street, a Financial Metafiction Novel (3 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

FORGOTTEN

Dr. Harry Mason lived in a townhome near the University.  It was a nice neighborhood close to Washington Park, which Harry claimed provided them with an ample supply of fresh oxygen.  He and his wife Jennifer had selected the house so Harry could walk to and from his economics classes.  Walking was often therapy for Harry.  It freed his mind from other things and allowed it to wander freely and be more creative.  At other times, it was a necessity.

     Jennifer had put the final touches on their packing and had slipped into the shower.  Harry was going through his briefcase, and suddenly he realized that he had left an essential part of his presentation back at his office, his home away from home.  He knocked on the bathroom door.

     “Dear, I’m afraid I’ve forgotten something at the office,” Harry said in his cockney English accent.

     “What did you say, Harry?”

     “I said, I’ve forgotten something at the office.  I’m going to go and fetch it.”

     “Just wait a few minutes, I’ll go with you.”

     “No, it’s okay.  I can do it myself.”

     “Harry, please wait for me.”

     Harry raised his voice.  “Jennifer, this is ridiculous.  I’m not a child.  I’ve done this walk thousands of times.”

     He grabbed his jacket and steamed out the door, slamming it, then felt instantly bad for his outburst.

    As he walked to the campus, confusion ruled the usually-orderly neighborhood.  The storefront glass at the local minimarket had been broken, and there were smashed groceries and spilled milk all over the sidewalk in front of it.  The store seemed abandoned and Mr. Drucker, the owner, was nowhere to be seen.

     He reached the gate of the University, which had been barricaded against incoming traffic.  Harry approached the guard’s booth.

     “What’s going on here, George?”

     “Oh, hi, Professor Mason.  Don’t you see?  All hell’s broken loose.  We’re not letting anyone on campus unless they show a student or staff I.D.”

     “Is it safe?”

     “On campus, of course.  But out there, I don’t know.”

     “Well, thanks, George.”

     Harry continued past the booth to his office.  Sure enough, the folder with his presentation outline and corresponding index cards was sitting on his desk.  He grumbled to himself as he slipped it into his briefcase.

    
How could I have forgotten the most important thing?

    
Harry looked around to make sure that there wasn’t anything else he had forgotten, then locked up the office and left for home.  He could hear sirens in the distance and small particles of ash were falling, covering everything on campus like a fine layer of grey snow.  He could see larger pieces of them wafting through the air toward the ground.  The smoke had cut off the sun, making it appear as if it were later than it really was.

     Harry waved to George at the security stand and turned left on S. Cottage Grove Avenue.  The usually-calm streets had become even more agitated since he had left home. 

***

A group of teenaged boys bumped into Harry at the corner, knocking him slightly off balance.

     “What are you waiting for, old man?”

     “Yeah, the lights are on but nobody’s home!”

     They laughed as they passed Harry.  He looked at them, startled, and then at the street light as they crossed.  He realized that he must have blanked out while he was waiting for the signal to change.  There was no telling how long he had been frozen there.  As the signal turned red, he watched the pedestrian countdown timer and counted with it out loud.

     “Twenty two, twenty one, twenty…”

     Finally the light turned green and Harry proceeded to cross the street.  But once he reached the corner of 60
th
and Cottage, he didn’t know whether to go forward or turn and, if so, which way to turn.  The dark sky seemed to spin around his head, and he broke into a cold sweat as panic set in. 
Okay, Harry, get a grip on yourself.  Just ask directions.  Directions – to your own house.

    
A group of students began to pass him.

     “Excuse me, could you please tell me how to get to…”

     One of the girls stopped and looked at Harry, waiting for him to finish his sentence.

     “Where do you want to go?”

     Harry opened his mouth to speak, but then realized he had forgotten his own address.  The girl continued to stare at him, impatiently, smacking on her gum.  She turned her head to her friends.

     “Be right there, guys.”

     Harry thought and thought.

     “Uh, Sixty-second Street.  That’s it.”

    
But what number?

     “It’s just ahead, two blocks.”

     “Thanks.”

     Harry felt like an idiot, and now wished he had gone to the office with Jennifer. 
Great pills.  Real miracle drug.

    
As he wandered along, wondering what his address was, everything began to appear strangely unfamiliar.  The neighborhood just didn’t look right.  He approached a group of three young men, who were working on a car.

     “Excuse me?”

     “What do you want, grandpa?”  This brought a chorus of laughter from the other two.

     “Yeah, can’t you see we’re busy?”

     The first guy pushed at Harry’s shoulder. 

     “You got money, pops?”

     “What?”

     “I said give me your money, old man.”

     He shoved Harry again.  Harry lost his balance, but one of the others caught him and threw him back to the first thug.  Then it turned into a shoving match, using Harry as the ball.  The first thug took Harry’s briefcase.

     “Is the money in here?”

     He opened it and spilled the contents all over the street, swiping through them, looking for cash.  Harry got on his knees and began scooping up the index cards.  Another one of the men kicked him, and he hit the pavement on his side.  As he lay on the ground, they ruffled threw his pockets, took his wallet, and ran off.

    
They must have been trying to steal that car.

     Harry stretched out on his back and lay on the pavement for a while until the sky stopped spinning, then struggled to get back on his knees to gather his papers.  He slid the briefcase toward him and put the papers into it in random order as he scooped them up.  He found his cell phone in the pocket of the case, but couldn’t remember his phone number.  He punched the telephone icon and dialed the last number in the memory.

     “Harry?”

     “Jen, honey.  I’ve had a little trouble.”

     “Where are you, Harry?”

     “South Cottage Avenue, near the campus.”

     “I’ll be right there.  Don’t move.”

CHAPTER SIX

THE WHIZ KIDS

The door to the lecture hall opened, temporarily startling the group already seated in the auditorium, and in walked Shirley Baxter, dressed to impress (which was her habit), her hair done in an upsweep style. She walked slowly through the corridor, pausing to look at the credentials and awards collected by the professor over the last fifty years, including his Nobel Prize in Economics and a page from his PhD thesis showing a mathematical proof, the basis of Modern Portfolio Theory, which Professor Mason was known for.

     Ike Pendleton nudged Carlos Rodriguez. “Look at that girl.  She’s a knockout, isn’t she?”

     “Be careful, Ike, you’re looking at a bomb ready to go off any minute, now. Shirley’s a genuine genius who knows about everything and can instantly retrieve every bit of knowledge buried in her brain with awesome precision.” 

    “And just how do you know that?”

   “We spent some time together last summer in my father’s home town in Mexico. She’s a very exciting creature with just about everything you’d want: beauty, charm, sex appeal, and money.”  

     “Money?” 

     “Don’t ask, cuz I don’t know.  Didn’t ask her.  I’ve got a deal with the manager of the local hotel in San Miguel de Allende.  He’s always on the lookout for chicks that I may like to meet.”

    “Nice.  And she was one of them?”

     “Yeah.  One evening he introduced her to me, and she told me to call her ‘Snookie.” 

    “Snookie?” 

     “Yeah, that’s her nickname.  I asked her ‘what brings you to our little city?’ and she said, ‘I’ve enrolled at University of Chicago to get my PhD in Economics, and I want to use your town as a laboratory for my thesis.’  Imagine that!  I spent three weeks helping her with her project and we agreed to meet up in the fall, here.”

     “So you were one of her lab rats, huh?”  

     Carlos laughed.

     “So what happened between you two?”

     “Nothing.  Dude, she’s untouchable.  All work and no play.”

     Snookie stopped, with finger on cheek, to examine the professor’s mathematical proof, as if she had discovered some flaw in the calculations. As she did, Professor Harry Mason entered the room. Harry was somewhere north of 70, but nowhere near retirement age.  His cockney accent betrayed the fact that he had transplanted himself from his native Britain in the 1970s.

    Harry was a tall, lean man, well-liked by his students.  He delivered lectures in a clear and straightforward manner and often stepped up to the blackboard to diagram a concept, prove an assumption, or to clarify an issue.  All of his students were impressed with his demeanor, his delivery, and an attitude that revealed a dedication to education.  They seemed to both love and fear him. When he sensed a student was not working up to his or her potential, he would burst forth with a raging statement in his cockney drawl, which always instilled both fear and motivation. 

     Harry cast a powerful figure dressed in his favorite sports coat, a hunting jacket with leather patches on the sleeves at the elbows which gave the impression that he would be going on a fox hunt right after class adjourned, when actually he would be heading home for a late breakfast.

  He had hand-selected every one of the students for this special economics workshop, but Snookie was the one who had most fascinated him.  He was most impressed by her prodigious memory and her impeccable records from all of the educational institutions she had attended in the past.  He admired how she had turned down financial aid from all of them, stating that she had the money to pay for her education and that she didn’t want to take from others who needed help.

    When he had quizzed her about the source of her funds, she told him that, with her earnings, she had invested in the stock market and had been fortunate in selecting the best system to use and was, in addition, very lucky that the market had been in a strong upward trend. 

     This was the first time the professor noticed that her character had changed from when they first met. Could it be that he was witnessing a drama and that she was acting out every scene as appropriate to the audience and the occasion?  There was something about the way she walked and her demeanor that reminded him of someone, somewhere, whom he had once known or met. He thought
This is going to be a very interesting and exciting semester,
but he was in no way prepared for the events that would unfold in the very near future.

     “Good morning, Ms. Baxter,” said Harry with a smile.  Snookie turned to him.  “Good morning, professor.”

     “You have a question about my mathematical proof?”

     “No.”  She turned back and went to find a seat in the first row.

    
No?  Then why were you staring at it so strangely?

     Harry shrugged it off and proceeded to the stage.  The room was dressed in his personality. On the far wall was a stained glass window depicting a meadow populated with deer and elk. One could feel (with some imagination) the breeze in the trees, smell the odor of morning dew on the meadow grasses, and hear the mating calls of the elk.

     The room's walls and ceiling were paneled with rare exotic woods selected by old world craftsmen. There were bookcases on both walls on either side of the hall. They contained bound copies of the
Economist
magazine and
The Journal of Finance,
going back many years.  In the corner of the room there was a piano whose keys played all on their own when you fed it quarters.

     “Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Economics Workshop.”

     Everyone greeted the professor, but they all seemed to have an eye on Snookie, who slid into a seat next to Ike Pendleton and Carlos Rodriguez.

     Carlos was a very handsome man, obviously from a wealthy family, with impeccable manners and grace. He was dressed in a silk leisure suit with expensive accessories and was wearing a very large diamond ring. 

     “You are all here today for various reasons, one of which is to earn a doctorate in economics.  I am going to take that journey with you, but I’m going to ask you to work, and work hard.  As Dorothy said to little Toto in
The Wizard of Oz
: we’re not in Kansas anymore - and it will become evident shortly why I say that.”

     Ike whispered to Carlos.  “He kind of looks like the Wizard.”  Carlos snorted and Snookie gave him an irritated look.

     “I can see some of you know each other already, so let’s get the introductions over with, shall we?  Mr. Rodriguez, you start.  What do you hope to accomplish this year at UChicago?”

     “Me?”  Carlos swallowed his smile.

     “Is there another Carlos Rodriguez in the room?”

     Ike snickered. 

     “You’re next, Mr. Pendleton.  Stand up, Mr. Rodriguez.”

     Carlos rose from his seat and tentatively looked around the room. “I’m doing my project on the differences between capitalistic systems and socialist systems and how to emphasize the advantages and minimize the problems to economies within the two systems.”

     “Thank you, Mr. Rodriguez.  You can sit down now.  Mr. Pendleton?”

    Ike stood, as if to give a speech.

     “I specialize in neuroeconomics and I intend to do original research on how and why investors in the stock market appear to act irrationally and not in their best economic interests. I believe that, at times, they don’t make rational decisions and that those decisions are influenced by Wall Street propaganda, to their determent. I’m conducting experiments in my laboratory here on campus with rats, birds, rabbits, primates, and other mammals to determine how they handle risk and why.  I’d like to invite all of you to my research laboratory. I’ve got a couple of horses there that always need some exercise that you’re welcome to ride any time.” 

     Snookie looked at Ike, puzzled at what possible good it would be for an economist to study birds and rabbits.

     “I’m sure we’ll all take you up on your offer, Mr. Pendleton.  I, for one, am fascinated with what rats and horses may have to do with the economy.  Mr. Brammon, how about you?”

     Bob Brammon specialized in quantitative analysis and was working on a high-speed computer trading project. 

     “I’m doing my thesis on trading systems using super high-speed computers to maximize profits from minute price anomalies. Although these systems are legal, the problem is that the technology that’s being developed is at the expense of those on the other side of the transaction – namely, the retail customer.”

    “How about you, Ms. Baxter?”

     “Well, I’m thinking of doing my thesis on risk and return, specifically on how investors evaluate risk and measure return. At present, I haven’t decided on the scope of my studies or the specific topics that I’ll cover and how much original research will be required.”

     Carlos whispered to Ike, “See, I told you.  All work and no play.”

     Harry now realized that when Snookie spoke, her words were effortlessly chosen and arranged in such an order that the tone and atmosphere created an effect she wanted to have on this group of young men, who were now at the height of their sexual hormone activity.

    
It’ll be a while before they’ll learn of her awesome intellectual power, the range of her skills, her dedication to each task and her vicious competitive spirit.

    “Mr. Thompson, would you please share with the class your reason for being here?”

     Larry Thompson was the son of a successful steel company executive.

     “For my PhD thesis, I’ll be focusing on a portion of the field of economics and compiling facts for investors that I intend publish annually. It will show investors how to use the data, as well.”

    “Let me know if you need some help,” Snookie said matter-of-factly.  Larry smiled nervously. 

     “Alright,” said Harry.  “Now that we know each other, I want you to know that you’ve all been personally selected for this special workshop by me, because you each have a particular special talent that we are going to need to accomplish our goal.”

     “What’s the goal?” asked Carlos.

     “I’m glad you asked,” said Harry.  "You – all of you – and I … we’re going to save the world.”