Dead Cat Bounce (4 page)

Jonah nodded. He had savings accounts and knew about interest from school.

“Good. But you might want to make a bit more money than that, and to make more money you’d have to do something that involves a bit more risk.”

Jonah shivered in anticipation. What his father was describing sounded exciting. “So what would I do?” he asked.

“You’d go to the financial markets, the stock market being the most obvious one, and buy shares in a company. Then you’d earn a portion of the company profits, which we call a dividend. It’s like interest, so let’s say that it’s the same as if you’d put your money in the bank.” David motioned to the money already on the desk. “But—and here’s where it gets interesting—if the price of that share you bought goes up, you’ll make more money, say another twenty pounds.” He added a twenty pound note.

Jonah quickly added the numbers together in his head. “So now I’d have a hundred and twenty-five pounds,” he said, his eyes growing wide.

“That’s right.” David nodded and held up his forefinger while reaching for the money with his other hand. “The trouble is, the price might also go down, and you could lose some of your hundred pounds.” He took forty-five pounds away and threw them in the garbage. “Understand?”

Jonah nodded, fighting the urge to reach into the bin and retrieve the forty-five pounds his father had thrown away. “So to make more money I have to risk actually losing some of the money I already have?”

“Very good,” said David. He sounded impressed.

Jonah smiled. “Why would the price go up or down?” he asked.

“Excellent question,” David answered, making Jonah’s smile grow even wider. “The price goes up if people think a company is going to do well, and therefore they buy the shares. It goes down if they think it’s going to do badly, and they sell the shares. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah. I think so,” said Jonah. “It’s like with trading cards at school. If you’ve got a really good card, you can swap it for loads of others because everyone wants it. If you’ve got a bad one, you can’t swap it for anything because nobody wants it?”

“Spot on!” David exclaimed.

Jonah beamed and went to make a high five, before pulling back at the last second, knowing that his dad probably wouldn’t reciprocate. All the same, coming to work with his father looked like it had been the right decision after all. They were finally talking—really talking! It was going to be a good day and maybe even the start of something more.

“Now,” David continued. “You might be willing to take a lot of risk so that you could double your money and turn your one hundred pounds”—he reached into the trash bin and put twenty pounds back on the pile—“into two hundred pounds.”

Jonah’s eyes lit up. “Yes,” he said, thinking again of the red Ferrari. “How do I do that?”

“Well, you might buy something called a derivative.” David took more money out of his wallet and put it on the desk. “But,” and here David paused, causing Jonah to take his eyes off the money, look at his father, and finish the sentence for him.

“I could lose it all?”

“Very good,” David said, and once more Jonah smiled. “But … it could be worse than that.” David picked all the money off the desk and threw it in the bin. “Because derivatives are very, very risky and”—he threw his wallet into the bin—“you might lose even more.”

Jonah’s face dropped. “No way! More money than you had in the first place?” He was on the edge of his seat.

“Yes, way,” said David.

Jonah wrinkled his forehead. He had a hundred pounds in his savings. Maybe he should buy a derivative and turn it into two hundred pounds. “But you could
make
a hundred pounds,” he said thoughtfully.

David shook his head and gave a patronizing smile. “Yes, you could make a hundred pounds. But that would be very unlikely.”

Jonah was not to be dissuaded. “What
is
a derivative?” he asked.

“Well,” said David thoughtfully, “it’s kind of a piece of a piece of a piece of something.”

Jonah’s brow furrowed, and his father seemed to think again about his explanation.

“Actually it doesn’t really matter what it is,” he said briskly. “The only thing you need to know today is that derivatives are extremely risky.” He gestured at his computer screen. “I don’t deal in them myself.”

Jonah’s heart fell. Of course his dad didn’t deal in the exciting stuff. “I’d still like to buy one,” he said.

David shook his head again, this time unsmiling. “No, Jonah. You need a lot of money to buy derivatives, a lot more than you have.”

Jonah’s heart fell further, but before he could ask how much money he needed, the ugly man on the right screamed, “SCROTYCZ!” at the top of his voice, making Jonah jump. The man was leaning over the partition holding out his phone to David. “WANTS TO SPEAK TO YOU NOW!”

David looked up. “Can you ask him to hold for thirty seconds? I’m nearly done.”

“FUCK OFF!” came the reply, making Jonah gasp. The man pointed at Jonah, and Jonah shrank backward. “Are you working today, Biff, or playing nanny? ’Cuz if you’re playing nanny, get someone else to answer your calls. Not me.” The man made a sneering face at Jonah.

“Give it a break, Gravel,” David retorted. “Do you think I want to be doing this? Ask him to hold.”

“NO!” Gravel bellowed. “He’s really pissed off. Why have you brought the midget in anyway? Nobody else has. It’s not a playground. Do you see any other kids here? Nobody else would be so stupid.”

The man on the left joined in. “Yeah, Biff. Why’ve you brought your kid in? Thicko!”

Jonah sat stock still, looking straight ahead, trying to avoid the eyes of the men, wondering whether he could hide under the desk, aware that his dad had said he didn’t want to be doing this.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” snapped David, snatching his phone up. He punched a slow flashing light on the board in front of him, took a deep breath, and spoke calmly into the mouthpiece. “Good morning, Mr. Scrotycz, how can I help you?”

Jonah heard a voice shout something unintelligible back down the phone and watched his father close his eyes and move the handset away from his ear. When the voice stopped ranting, his dad brought the phone back, opened his eyes, and started speaking again, this time in Russian, which Jonah couldn’t understand.

With his father’s attention now elsewhere, Jonah looked surreptitiously around the trading floor to see if there were any other kids.

The ugly man was right. There weren’t.

Now he felt really bad. He sat there, trying to be invisible, listening to his father speaking in Russian, watching him trying to rein back his temper, imagining the hateful eyes of the other traders on his back, imagining them talking about him.

Suddenly, a voice behind him boomed, “What have we here?”

Jonah hunched his shoulders in fear.
Oh, no
, he thought,
another horrible man about to tell me I shouldn’t be here
.

“Are these Neanderthals being nasty to you?” the voice roared. “I heard some grunting as I was passing Drizzlers’ Den and thought I’d come and find out what the commotion was about.”

Jonah carefully spun his chair around and looked upward. All he could see was a huge mustache: thick, black, and waxed to a sharp point about three quarters of the way across each side of a broad face. There was more to the person, but beyond the fantastical mustache it was impossible to take in anything else at first
glance. The mustache began to move as the voice boomed again. “And if your dad won’t do anything about it, I will.”

There were eyes too now, looking straight at him, dark and cold below a high forehead topped by an aggressive crew cut, also black.

“What would you like me to do? Shall I
biff
them?” The word “biff” was accentuated, and the man raised two very hairy fists and held them in front of his face like a boxer. “I will if you want. Trust me. My word is my bond. It’s the only way to treat bullies, to fight back.” He threw two fast punches into the air. “Biff, biff!” he exclaimed and dropped his hands back down. “You’ve probably been told that.”

Jonah found that he was inadvertently nodding in agreement, although he’d actually been told the opposite over the years.

“But you normally don’t have to. Just
look
like you will.”

The mustachioed man turned away and raised his fists once more. “Oi! Rock. Gravel. Want to pick on someone your own size?” he growled.

Jonah looked up to see that it was now the two ugly men who were cowering, trying to hide behind the glass partitions.

“See what I mean? Drizzlers all the way through. Say boo to them and they’ll run a mile. They’re like a loud fart that doesn’t smell. Noisy but nothing dangerous, eh?” The man paused for a second, apparently pleased with his analogy, humor in his eyes.

Jonah turned back to face his father, holding back a snicker, when all of a sudden he heard a loud “BOO!” from behind him.

He spun his chair quickly back around.

The large man was roaring with laughter and pointing at Rock and Gravel. “Did you see the looks on their faces?!”

Jonah glanced in the direction of his father’s desk mates to discover that they were in fact visibly shaking. He gave up holding back his snicker, now impossible to contain, and burst out laughing himself.

“Very good, sonny,” the man said, straight-faced once more. “You didn’t even jump. Impressive. There aren’t many lads of your age who wouldn’t bat an eye at all the hubbub here. Certainly not anyone who would end up with this lot. Maybe you should come with me and join my band of Whistlers, eh?”

Jonah didn’t know what a Whistler was, but if they were like this man, joining them sounded like fun. He shifted his eyes to see if his dad was paying attention, but he wasn’t so Jonah took a closer look at the man who’d so easily silenced his tormenters. He now had a big grin on his face, and a set of teeth had appeared from beneath the mustache. They were immaculately white and straight at the front, and as the smile grew wider it revealed a glint of gold on the sides. Below the smile was a hairless chin and a huge tie knot framed by a white collar, framed in its turn by a dark blue jacket with broad chalk stripes running down it. His neck was thick, his shoulders wide, his chest powerful.

Jonah’s insignificant twelve-year-old hand reached out of its own accord and shook the man’s. As he pulled his hand back, he caught a glimpse of a skull-and-crossbones ring on the man’s little finger. A pirate’s ring! Jonah wanted to say as much, but before he knew it, he was introducing himself. “I’m Jonah. Lightbody. David’s son.”

“Hello, Jonah. Lightbody. David’s son. I am the Baron,” said the man.

“The Baron?” Jonah’s voice sounded like the squeak of a trapped mouse against the deep, mellifluous growl of this extraordinary being in front of him. His eyes traveled back up toward the gold teeth, the mustache, and the dark eyes.

“It’s only a nickname,” interrupted David, his phone call now over. “What do you want, Baron?”

The Baron’s eyes stayed on Jonah’s and momentarily darkened even further. Then they lightened, and he drew his hand upward to stroke his mustache, his fingers snapping as they sharpened it at the ends.

He glanced at David. “That’s right, Biff. ‘Baron’ is a nickname, like
Biff
.” And again the “biff” was emphasized. “Only this one has been gained by action, not inaction.” He turned back to Jonah. “Comes from the Bloody Red Baron, sonny. The greatest flying ace in the First World War. More kills than any other pilot.”

The man’s skull-and-crossbones ring was now fully visible in all its heavy, gold glory and his eyes twinkled as if to suggest that there was more to the story than what he was saying.

“You didn’t kill anyone, did you?” Jonah asked breathlessly.

The Baron gave a knowing grin. “Trading killings, sonny. That’s why the market calls me the Baron. More
trading killings
than anyone else in the market. Nothing violent. We don’t like violence here, do we
Biff
?” Only now did he turn and really look at David, the challenge obvious in his eyes.

David opened his mouth to reply, but before he could say anything the Baron had continued.

“But enough of this bantaaaaaar, Biff. You asked what I wanted. Well, I saw your lad sitting, doing nothing, and I thought,
Well,
maybe he’d like to do stuff that’s a bit more interesting. Learn something about trading from the best.
” His eyes flicked back to Jonah and winked conspiratorially before returning to David. “My trading assistant’s got a dental appointment, and I need someone to do some inputting for me and the lads. Straightforward stuff.” He turned again to Jonah, and, sizing him up, he added, “Child’s play in fact, with all due respect.”

Jonah smiled in encouragement.

David snorted with derision. “You
are
joking, aren’t you? Let you and your bunch of reprobate financial terrorists loose on my son?”

“No joking, Biff,” countered the Baron, shaking his head. “Only trying to help. Sounds like you’ve got your work cut out filling orders for some Russkie. And my reprobates—who, I might add, make more money for this firm than the rest of this floor combined—will treat him much better than these two Neanderthals have been.” He waved dismissively at the ugly traders on either side of David, and Jonah found himself willing his father to say yes.

“Go on, Dad,” he pleaded, certain that doing anything with this Baron man would involve excitement and fun. Maybe it was even his Ferrari he’d seen earlier. “This way you can get your work done and maybe we can have lunch together later. And I promise I’ll go home after that.”

David hesitated, his eyes searching Jonah’s to see if this was what he truly wanted. Jonah nodded. “All right then,” David finally responded, and looking up at the Baron he added, “But no funny business, eh? He’s only a kid.”

“My word is my bond, Biff.” The Baron smiled and flicked his head at Jonah. “Come on, sonny. To the Bunker!”

As Jonah stood up, feeling excited once again, David said to him, “If you get bored or don’t like it, come and find me here, and we’ll get you a taxi home.”

“Yes, Dad,” he replied, doubting that would happen, and, turning his back on his father, he followed the Baron across the trading floor. He didn’t know it then, but it would be years before he ever turned back.