The Search for the Dice Man (29 page)

The decisive day of my life occurred at the Battle country estate overlooking the Hudson on the day that William Fanshawe Battle III held his First Annual War Party. Actually he called it, on the advice from his PR department, a ‘Celebration of the Triumph of the Human Spirit.’

He’d invited Mr Sato, the President of the Nagasaki Sumo Bank, his wife, and two senior vice presidents, good old Akito and Mr Namamuri, to spend the whole weekend at the estate, the better to impress them with the quality of his friends and business associates. Mr Battle seemed to feel that one of his chief selling points to them was my increasingly inexplicable knack, and he hoped my scientific approach to trading would be the seal to the deal he wanted to make.

At a private
tèlt-à-tête
a little before noon he impressed upon me how important this party was to the success of BB&P and urged me to be at my most charming and technical. I nodded.

The party was scheduled to begin officially at two o’clock and last until God knew when. It was an eclectic party, to say the least. Guests could play poker, baccarat, or watch the war on CNN on any of the four conveniently located television sets. They could eat at any of five buffet tables or drink from any of three bars, all colourfully prepared by Celeste’s Heavenly Hosts. They could dance to a band that had promised no heavy metal, or swim in the heated indoor pool. They could even talk.

Kim had not been invited to the party, for reasons that seemed obvious to all concerned. The night before, she and I had had a phone tiff about my going to the party
without her. I told her I was still on my ‘spiritual retreat’ and going solely as part of my job and not to be with Honoria. After a long silence on the line Kim had then spoken with quiet anger: ‘When are you going to start creating your own life again?’ she said softly. ‘I’m getting a little tired of your shilly-shallying!’

‘I know and I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘But whatever move I make next will irrevocably affect the rest of my life. I’d sort of like to know what I’m doing when I’m doing it.’

‘Human beings never know what they’re doing when they’re doing it,’ she countered. ‘The smart ones just go ahead and do it anyway.’

And she hung up. Since Honoria had hung up on me three times that week for roughly the same reason – my sitting on the fence – I was used to it and no longer wondered if the phone company had cut us off.

Having been ordered by Mr Battle to arrive early, I wandered through the rooms feeling very detached from the proceedings. I was feeling more out of place than ever, a stranger accidentally plopped down in a life I’d never intended.

When I met Honoria in a hallway we greeted each other cautiously, both wondering the same thing: whether I was going to marry her and live happily ever after with the Battle millions or be a fool and do something else.

When I wandered into the kitchen I was surprised to see Kim busily laying out food on one of the half-dozen serving cans. She was dressed in the blue and white uniform of Celeste’s Heavenly Hosts. I approached her almost as warily as I had Honoria.

‘What are you doing here?’ I asked.

‘What’s it look like?’ she answered. ‘I am earning my living.’

‘I mean –’

‘Me and the die figured out that if you can’t get in the front door, there’s always the back one,’ she said. ‘So I
convinced Celeste she could use someone like me who knew the inside of this place.’

‘But why?’

‘I didn’t think you should be unsupervised at a party like this,’ she said with one of her mischievous smiles.

‘Ah,’ I said.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘You won’t even notice me.’ And with that she went back to spreading out what looked to be egg rolls.

‘Mr Rhinehart, sir?’ said the suddenly appearing Hawkins. ‘A Mrs Ecstein has arrived and would like to see you.’

I turned reluctantly away from Kim and trailed after Hawkins, wondering what the unpredictable Arlene was up to this time. I knew she’d been invited to the party – after all, she was one of BB&P’s better new clients – but wondered why she was asking for me.

Arlene greeted me just outside the main kitchen in one of her younger versions, with dark hair and wearing a conservative business suit. She was also carrying a ridiculously large and apparently full plastic shopping bag.

When I came up to her she handed me a copy of the
New York Post.

‘Have you seen this?’ she asked pleasantly, as if sharing some amusing society item.

I never read the
Post
and, this being Saturday, hadn’t actually seen any newspaper. The
Post
page-one headline was its usual succinct self: ‘
FEDS FLUSH FLAKES
‘. And then a smaller headline: ‘FBI and DEA officials raid dice communes’

I began reading. Page three indicated that officers from several federal and state agencies varying from drug enforcement to the IRS had raided three illegal communes – Lukedom in Virginia, Chanceton in Colorado, and Dice in California. They’d arrested over one hundred people, including Jake Ecstein. One article painted a sewery picture of life at the communes: slavery, brainwashing,
cult religion, random sex, religious sacrilege, gross overcharging at restaurants, tax evasion, and rampant car theft. There was supposedly fanatical cult worship of the masterfiend Luke, who allegedly just escaped from the raid on Lukedom only minutes before it began.

The two
Post
articles were more restrained than the
World Star
article of four months earlier, but not by much. The only new contribution I noted in my quick browsing was to suggest that my father had a secret cadre of thousands of underground followers who had infiltrated important sections of American life. FBI official Putt claimed that the bureau was gathering evidence that indicated secret dice men in various banks were seeding bank computers with random elements that had led to many cases of masses of money being erroneously shifted from one account to another, with thousands of people spending or vanishing with the unexpected windfall before the errors were caught. He also claimed that dicepeople in the US and various state governments had intervened in the decision process to bring about all sons of bizarre decisions that ‘normal, rational’ government would never have made – although how the bizarre decisions of normal rational governments could be distinguished from dice decisions Putt didn’t make clear.

An IRS official claimed that the two hundred thousand erroneous tax refunds the IRS had sent out the previous year had been the result of another nefarious dicing infiltrator. And the Virginia State Police were looking into the probability that dicepeople in Lukedom were running one of the largest car-theft rings in the east. On the other hand, as far as I could see, there was no mention of finding any underground hideout under Lukedom’s mountain.

The
Post
had three photographs, one of three hippie women smiling vacantly in front of a teepee; a second of two sober-looking FBI agents manhandling a cheerful-looking Jake; and a third, naturally, of Luke Rhinehart,
the same old photo taken many years earlier of Luke smiling benevolently at the camera. I shook my head.

‘It blames it all on Luke,’ I said. ‘But my father wasn’t even there.’

‘Oh, well, a little fiction never hurt anyone,’ said Arlene sedately. ‘Besides, I saw several sentences that verged on accuracy.’

‘You’ve been there?’ I asked.

‘Oh, yes. I take my vacations at one or the other – it’s like going home.’

‘I’m sorry about your husband,’ I said.

‘Oh, don’t worry about Jake. He’s just happy to be back on page one again. If all of life is an act, then it’s nice to have a larger audience to play to.’

‘
Have you seen this!?
’ shouted Mr Battle, storming down the hall toward us brandishing a copy of the
Post
like a subpoena. ‘This is horrible!’

‘I don’t think my father has been to these places in years,’ I said.

‘It makes no difference! His name is associated with this lunacy! What will the Japanese think!? You’ve got to change your last name!’

‘The Japanese don’t care about anything in the
Post,’
I said. ‘They never read anything that doesn’t have at least half the text in numbers.’

‘Well, the least you can do,’ persisted Mr Battle, ‘is issue a statement totally dissociating yourself from your father and this lunatic dice business.’

‘Well, I’m certainly willing to dissociate myself from my father but –’

‘Larry,’ interrupted Arlene, handing me the paper and pointing. ‘I think maybe you should read this.’ She was pointing to the last paragraph of the long article, a paragraph which, in my first browsing, I hadn’t read. With Mr Battle peering over my shoulder, I now did.

‘Agents said that Wall Street speculator Larry Rhinehart,
the son of Luke Rhinehart, had recently spent a week in Lukedom, apparently preparing new financing for the community.’

‘Deny it!’ boomed Mr Battle. ‘You were in my house every day that week!’

Arlene pulled me away from my distraught boss and, again speaking as if she were just sharing light gossip, let fall another bombshell.

‘And did you know that Lukedom does all its banking through the Nagasaki Sumo Bank?’ she asked.

‘You mean … Akito …!?’

‘Just thought you’d be interested.’

‘We’ll sue the
Past!’
interrupted Mr Battle, pulling me away from Arlene. ‘They have no right to mention our firm! We never finance anybody!’

I pulled myself from Mr Battle and wandered away. Chaos was making another comeback.

The guests began to arrive. and nothing quiets the passions of civilized people faster than the arrival of their guests. Mr Battle, who had been raving at noon, was smiling warmly and radiating welcome and goodwill by two. Larry, who was frightened and upset at noon, changed into his most conservative business suit and by two was ready to impress the Japanese with his brilliance and reliability.

It had been agreed that the subject of Luke and the dice communes should not be mentioned, and that if others brought it up, it was to be dismissed as idle gossip or old news or totally trivial. Mr Battle was prepared to say that Luke Rhinehart was actually Larry’s stepfather and that Larry had refused to have anything to do with him for fifteen years. Larry may have briefly visited Lukedom, but only in an effort to rescue his distant cousin Kim who had been lured there by false advertising. The idea that Larry had gone there on a quest to find his father to tell him off was not one that stood up to close scrutiny; Mr Battle dismissed it out of hand.

Honoria, now dressed in a lovely, flowing, figure-masking off-the-shoulder red dress, saw Larry briefly before the guests began arriving. She gave him her sympathy about the
Post
story and assured him that she wasn’t going to let that prevent her from marrying her baby’s father.

‘Since they still haven’t caught him,’ she added matter-of-factly, ‘my father thinks you may be able to weather this
Post
thing. However, we do think it’s best you deny ever being in Lukedom. Who will believe the word of one of those dicepeople against yours?’

Right. Who indeed?

‘Dicepeople are very unreliable,’ he said with bitter mischief, suddenly aware that he and the enemy were one. And then the guests began to flood in.

When Larry saw Akito he went straight to him and asked whether his bank was handling Lukedom’s affairs. Akito responded by smiling blandly and bowing his head.

‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘Good client.’

‘And do they get their financing from you?’

‘Oh, no. We’re just middleman.’

‘The funds come from a company called DI, right?’

Akito simply smiled and bowed again.

‘I can say nothing about DI,’ he said.

‘I thought I was your hotshot trader friend!’

‘Of course, but this company is very particular about its privacy.’

‘I’ll bet it is,’ said Larry, wheeling away.

The guests continued to arrive. All the leading lights of Blair, Battle and Pike were there, including Brad and Jeff and even Vic Lissome; there were all the firm’s wealthiest clients, including Mr Potter and Arlene, who had inexplicably reincarnated herself in her blonde wig and an odd sequined dress that made her look like a retired madam. There were all of Honoria’s business associates at Salomon Brothers, many of the males flocking around her like bees to honey. Dr Bickers wandered in, looking serious and morose like a good therapist. Agent Macavoy came disguised as a conservative banker and thus looked not unlike an FBI agent. Putt turned out to be working with Celeste’s Heavenly Hosts, disguised as a waiter, but being so alert and narrow-eyed he resembled an ageing pervert with his eye out for boys.

Mr and Mrs Sato and Namamuri were there, Mr Sato with a personal translator always at his side. Mr Sato was the head of the Nagasaki Sumo Bank, a slight intense man with fiery eyes who always looked as if he was about to spring at something. The Japanese mingled humbly and
shrewdly with the bankers and investors and brokers, bowing and smiling and knowing that this party, like the war it celebrated, was all only the brave front of the pitiful American giant in decline.

At first this vast panorama of society mingled together with precisely that mixture of wit and wisdom that Mr Battle always hoped for. Larry spoke with deep seriousness (he was trying to keep his mind off the
Post
article) to Mr Sato and his translator about the necessity of always monitoring one’s technical indicators and updating the software. He assured them that the collapsing Tokyo stock market was only in a temporary bull market correction, telling them this not because it was what he thought but because it wasn’t considered good salesmanship to tell people whose money you were after that their booming nation’s economy was built on quicksand.

Jeff spoke passionately to Akito about the necessity of throwing out charts and software, ignoring technical indicators, and developing faith in the Gods. He assured Akito that the collapsing Tokyo stock market was not just a bull market correction but probably the long overdue Divine Retribution.

Honoria circulated, telling anyone who asked that she and Larry were a happy twosome again and that rumours that their engagement had been broken off or the wedding postponed were sheer fabrications.

Jeff began playing poker, letting a die determine how much he bet on each round; the other players soon feared he was a ringer. Some of the younger crowd decided to go swimming and started a water volleyball game. The older folks, which was most of the guests, settled into some serious drinking and gossiping. Dr Bickers was not playing anything, but moved sociably around the room mumbling ‘Mmmmm’ at all the right places and thus impressing everyone with his intelligence. Mr Namamuri gravitated to the indoor pool and the
water volleyball to watch the women’s breasts bounce. Macavoy infiltrated the poker game and went broke.

Arlene Ecstein was playing her dicelife, varying her personality every fifteen minutes, exactly as her mentor Luke had done twenty years earlier. Her six personalities that day were grandmotherly society matron, secret mistress of Mr Battle, thoughtful intellectual, bank president, uninhibited nymphomaniac, and retarded bag lady who had once been Mr Battle’s secret wife. When appropriate she would repair for a change of costume or wig from her huge bag stored in one of the guest bedrooms.

She carried all her roles off to perfection. She convinced Mr Sato that her bank – Eckle’s Bank and Trust of Hempstead – was something his firm should look into. As society matron she made Honoria feel that perhaps her stunning off-the-shoulder red dress was a bit
de trop
for this particular gathering. As nymphomaniac she had Macavoy cornered in a large closet with his pants down when the fifteen minutes was up, and she became a thoughtful intellectual commenting on the severe psychological debility often experienced by men having a small penis.

Mr Battle, being a shrewd host, had urged all the bartenders to serve the stiffest drinks, consistent with people actually being able to down them, and soon a large minority of the guests were beginning to feel that this was one of the most wonderful afternoons of their lives. Friends who were normally utterly boring now seemed the soul of wit; a woman who had always seemed sexless now stirred fires in normally cold loins; business comments which could be summarized as stating that the market might go up and it might go down now appeared of uncanny wisdom.

But then the tragedy struck.

People began to gather around one area of the main living room and became so engrossed in something that others began to feel left out. Someone had brought in two copies of the afternoon edition of the
New York Post.
Its
headline was the same, but now there were three articles about the raid on the dice communes. The third, a short one, said evidence was being gathered that linked the prestigious old-line Wall Street firm of Blair, Battle and Pike to the financing of Lukedom. The heart of the story was little more than that Larry Rhinehart had recently spent some time in Lukedom, that he was the son of Luke Rhinehart, and that he was a Vice President at Blair, Battle and Pike. A new page three headline read simply: ‘
WALL STREET FUNDS ORGIES?
’.

There are two ways to respond to that question. First, one can be shocked. Second, one might comment that Wall Street has done a lot worse. In any case it was a provocative question, especially since the Wall Street firm in question was heavily represented at this party. Soon guests who had read the articles, or heard a few paragraphs from them, or who had overheard someone quote from a snippet from one, were happily circulating to commiserate with the employees of Blair, Battle and Pike and particularly, of course, with the unfortunate Larry Rhinehart.

The sizeable minority that was enjoying the liquor and the punch and the champagne found the whole subject of role-playing and random living and orgies rather amusing, but more sober guests were shocked and angry. Either angry at Larry and Blair, Battle and Pike for funding such abominations, or at the
Post
for having falsely accused them of doing so. The party became livelier.

Soon Larry found himself surrounded by a cluster of people asking him what Lukedom had been really like, attacking him for not practising safe sex, and commiserating with him for having been falsely accused of being at such a sick place and for having such a horrible father. He wasn’t sure which altitude he hated most. But he no longer felt like a cool reliable hotshot. He could use a drink.

Arlene, whenever her diewatch signalled she play
thoughtful intellectual, expounded the philosophy of diceliving to any and all, and when she was tossed by chance into desperate nymphomaniac she sometimes used the dice to try to get her prey loosened up. She began to pass out dice, a supply of which she apparently had in her large plastic bag. Since in one of her random incarnations she had told some guests she was the mistress of Mr Battle (‘kept locked away most of the time’), and these guests, knowing a good conversational opener if they ever heard one, had repeated this information to any and all, it soon became common knowledge that the secret mistress of the host was handing out dice and advocating the dicelife.

This further polarized the party into those who were offended and those who felt that whatever a person as rich as Mr Battle thought was in must, by definition, be in. Some of the guests began to make decisions and play roles with the dice.

Larry, despite two double scotches, was still annoyed at whatever people said to him. They were all either assholes for believing the
Post
story or assholes for thinking he was funding the communes or assholes for thinking that Lukedom was an abomination or assholes even for attacking his father. Mr Sato was the straw that broke the back of Larry’s restraint.

As translated by his aide, who stood so close to Mr Sato’s right side that they were frequently mistaken for Siamese twins, Mr Sato said: ‘I am so sorry your father has disgraced himself. American society is very sick to permit such chaos and lack of discipline. We are sure you and your firm have nothing whatsoever to do with this man and his theories.’

‘Well, fuck you,’ said Larry, having nothing personal against Mr Sato except that he was the guest who happened to be in front of him when he could no longer hold himself back. ‘My father hasn’t disgraced himself because, for one, he wasn’t there, and for two, there was nothing happening at Lukedom to be ashamed of.’

The ‘fuck you’ opening to Larry’s speech doubled the size of the crowd listening, and the doubling attracted further people. Mr Battle himself hurried over, hoping that Larry was distracting people from Lukedom by discussing pork belly futures.

‘It so happens that my father founded Lukedom as a social experiment for freeing people from leading drab, repetitious, trapped lives,’ Larry went on. ‘Like most of the people in this room. The crazies I met in Lukedom were a lot happier than most of the crazies here.’

‘What about the orgies?’ asked a voice from the fringe.

‘The orgies were terrific,’ Larry found himself shooting back. ‘So was the master-slave game. The only problem I had at Lukedom was rampant car-borrowing and the restaurant tabs.’

‘Is it true your father has people sacrifice themselves?’ asked another voice.

Mr Battle began tugging desperately at his sleeve.

‘Absolutely,’ answered Larry. ‘That’s what my father’s dicelife is all about: sacrificing yourself. If an individual isn’t destroyed every day my father gets depressed.’

This elicited a fair amount of comment, not all of it favourable.

‘Do you follow your father’s philosophy?’ someone else

‘Of course no –’ Mr Battle tried to get in.

‘I use the dice all the time,’ interjected Larry loudly. ‘Especially in my trading for my clients.’

An awed silence greeted this remark, broken only by Mr Battle’s long low moan.

‘Why, without the dice I’d be just another investment adviser,’ Larry went on. ‘But with the Lord Chance working for me I double people’s money in two years. How do you think I’ve been so successful?’

‘Jeff, Jeff!’ screamed Mr Battle desperately. ‘Tell them Larry’s lying!’

Jeff, standing at the edge of the gathering crowd with his
newly-acquired serenity, moved in next to Larry and turned to Mr Battle with a gentle smile.

‘Of course, we’ve been using dice,’ he said serenely. ‘Anything else would be blasphemous.’

A long sigh of awe rippled through the financial sections of the crowd. Akito’s alert eyes narrowed in wonderment, and Mr Sato was listening so closely to his translating aide that his ear seemed glued to the man’s mouth.

‘No, no, no,’ interrupted Mr Battle desperately. ‘It’s absolutely not –’

‘What about the secret cadres infiltrating all of American life?’ asked a fierce-faced lady at the fringe of the crowd.

‘Absolutely.’ said Larry. ‘Why, who before now suspected me of being a secret diceperson? Or Mr Battle here? If Blair, Battle and Pike are working secretly to turn the world into Lukedom. how many others must there be?’

How many indeed? The listeners were awed by this prospect. Mr Battle a diceperson! That took some adjusting to. But then, of course, thought some, his poor mistress was one. And the man who had been his scheduled future son-in-law. And his daughter had been to Lukedom too, according to the latest rumour making the rounds. And that cousin – Kim something.

‘This is preposterous,’ tried Mr Battle. ‘Why, I –’

‘Is your father as nutty as he seems?’ asked some fellow at the fringe.

‘Of course,’ said Larry, getting into the swing of things and downing another glass of champagne someone handed him. ‘But it’s all a fake. He’s actually a deeply serious man intent on changing the world by blasting the chains of reason and consistency.’