Dead Cat Bounce (5 page)

Jonah followed the
Baron down the avenue of desks, fascinated as each new group of traders raised a hand in greeting. Clearly, everyone here knew the Baron and wanted him to know them. The Baron, for his part, acknowledged the fawning traders with a short nod of his head or a swift flick of the wrist. Words, however, were never exchanged. Jonah felt as if he were part of a royal procession, albeit one where he received quizzical looks as to what his involvement was in all of this. Some traders even went so far as to roll their eyes at him—a gesture that suggested the Baron was the king of their trading floor—and what right did he, Jonah, have to be taken under his protection instead of one of his long-loyal acolytes?

Jonah’s stomach pained ever so slightly with guilt—he didn’t want to usurp anyone’s role—but mostly he was overwhelmed with a warm sense of pride that the Baron had selected him specifically.

As they approached the far corner of the floor, Jonah noticed a grouping of desks that was set apart from the rest. The desks were
arranged as three opposite three with a double desk at the end, and above them hung four models of old airplanes, the largest of which was a six-foot-long red triplane marked with the German cross. Down the center partition was a huge castle made out of Lego bricks, and to the side there was a fish tank, which, as far as Jonah could tell, had no fish in it, only a model submarine, a sunken model battleship, and two fifty-pound notes stuck to the inside of the glass. On the wall behind the double desk, there was a massive TV screen showing CNBC News. This double desk stood in stark contrast to the others in the block. They all sprouted screens like satellite dishes on a telecom tower; the double desk had keyboards but no screens and was covered with figurines.

“Welcome to the Bunker!” the Baron pronounced.

There were five men and one woman gathered behind the desks, drinking coffee and talking animatedly. None of them were on the phone. They all had crew cuts, except the woman, whose platinum blonde hair was tied up in plaited bunches. As Jonah and the Baron arrived, this group stood to attention by clicking their heels together and raising their right hands in a flat-handed salute, palms forward much like policemen giving stop signals. The Baron stopped, returned the salute, and threw his briefcase onto the double desk. It landed with a thud, luck more than care ensuring that it avoided the endless figurines that dotted the surface.

Jonah’s eyes expanded to the size of saucers—did that really just happen?

A piratical voice rang out from the other side of the desks. “What you got there, Baron? A new recruit?”

Jonah searched for the source and found a man with sallow
skin and a face like a weasel making a funny, leering expression.

“Something like that, Dog,” said the Baron, guiding Jonah forward and around the desks so that they were on the same side as the traders. “This here is Jonah Lightbody, Biff’s lad. I’ve rescued him from Drizzlers’ Den to join us for some piracy on the high seas of finance.”

The group sneered at that one. “Ooo arrrr Jim lad!” the man from before yelled out. Jonah tried not to laugh. This was more like the prefects’ common room at school than his dad’s work.

The Baron, however, wasn’t as pleased. His eyes flashed with silent rage, daring the man—Dog he’d called him—to say more. He didn’t. Seeing he’d won the battle, the Baron visibly relaxed, unclenching his jaw and wrapping his arm around Jonah like a kindly uncle. “Jonah is going to be helping me this morning, so keep the language down. We don’t want him getting a bad impression, do we now?”

“No, we wouldn’t want that,” said a man in a pink shirt, a smirk playing at the edge of his lips.

“Good,” replied the Baron, stone-faced. Then, apparently confident that Jonah would be at least reasonably well cared for, he added, “Settle him in, will you? I’ll be back in ten minutes. Got to make some calls.” And with that, he turned and strode off across the floor.

The area grew strangely silent with the Baron’s departure. Whatever animation had existed while Jonah’s protector was there disappeared once he was left to fend for himself.

A pen clicked. A chair swiveled.

Jonah searched for a friendly face, but the traders looked at him with a mixture of curiosity and disgust, as if unsure what to make of this newest entry into their gang.

A tall man looked like he might be a potential ally. That is, until he licked his lips as if Jonah were the latest delicacy to be chomped on and spat out. The woman also seemed promising—perhaps she’d be warm and supportive like Jonah’s English teacher Mrs. Humphries? But as soon as Jonah’s gaze darted in the woman’s direction, she narrowed her eyes, and he realized that she was nothing like his teacher.

“Does he speak?” said a man in a bow tie.

“Nah, doesn’t seem so,” answered the man whom the Baron had called Dog.

Jonah glanced nervously back across the floor to where his dad sat with the two “Neanderthals.”
That’s what the Baron had said they were, right?
He wondered if perhaps he’d made a mistake leaving the Stone Age.

“Guess that’s it then,” said the man in the pink shirt. “The Baron’s brought us a mute.”

“Too bad,” said the tall man. “I thought he might have been fun to have around here.”

Jonah knew he had to do something quickly and recalled the way that these people had responded to the Baron. Even this man, who was a good foot taller than his boss, had stood at attention. Obviously, bravado triumphed around here. Jonah summoned all of his strength. “Hello,” he said to the traders around him. It came out as “Lo” because his voice cracked on the first syllable. He steeled his nerves and tried again. “What’s everyone looking at? I figured you’d all have work to do.”

“Oooh frisky, isn’t he?” said the woman with a slight French accent, a look of self-possessed shock on her face.

“Well,” Jonah practically choked, “don’t you?”

“Hah,” guffawed the man called Dog. “What are we going to call you?” he said.

“My name’s Jonah Lightbody,” Jonah supplied, breathing a sigh of relief that his gamble had played off.

“We know what your name is,” answered the same man—he was apparently the leader of the pack in the Baron’s absence. “But you’ve got to have a nickname if you’re going to come a-raping and a-pillaging with us Bunker Boys.” He paused, once again making his weasel face. “I’m Dog by the way.”

“Wasn’t Jonah that bloke that got eaten by a whale?” asked the man with the pink shirt. He nodded at Jonah. “I’m Milkshake.” Jonah wondered if the nickname had anything to do with the flavor-of-the-week shirts he appeared to prefer.

“What about ‘Jaws’?” suggested the tall man.

“Jaws was a shark, you prat,” sneered Dog. “Don’t let Birdcage’s height fool you, Jonah. He’s so busy seeing into the clouds that he’s got no idea what’s going on here on Earth.”

“Bloody big shark though. Killed a lot of people,” Birdcage mumbled. Leaning over to shake Jonah’s hand, he added, “They call me Birdcage because my surname is Avery. Like an aviary. Pleased to meet you.”

“That and because he’s got a birdbrain,” chirped Dog, but Jonah noticed that the comment seemed to fall on deaf ears.

“Moby Dick. He was a whale,” was the next suggestion, this time from the man with the bow tie. Jonah was about to ask him his name, even though his icy exterior hadn’t completely melted, but before he could, the man simply said, “Jeeves” in a way that
required no explanation. Given the name, Jonah wondered whose valet he was exactly—the Baron’s or Dog’s….

“As in ‘I feel a bit Moby Dick’? I don’t think so,” said Dog.

Jeeves scowled, then immediately reined himself in as Dog raised his eyebrows. Jonah smiled to himself—he supposed that answered his question.

“What’s wrong with Jaws?” tried Birdcage for a second time.

“It’s not a whale,” Dog answered.

“There’s that film
Free Willy
with the whale in it. What about Willy?” suggested the woman with the blonde hair. Looking at Jonah, she added, “I’m Françoise if you’re curious.”

“Françoise!” interjected Dog. “Only your mum calls you that. Your name is Franky.” And then he leered, “Or sometimes Spanky, eh?”

“Get lost, Dog,” said the woman, and, turning back to Jonah, she threatened, “It’s Françoise or Franky, but never Spanky. Got it?”

Jonah nodded.
Scary woman
, he thought.

“Gentlemen, let’s get back to the task at hand,” Jeeves announced, waving his hand in a call for silence.

“How about Steamboat?” Milkshake now piped up, getting back in on the action.

“No. No. I got it. Orchid,” said Birdcage.

“Orchid?” Jeeves echoed, as stone-faced as before.

“Yeah. You know. The name for a killer whale,” said Birdcage. This time his voice took on a more nasal quality.

“Orca, you idiot. Orc—‘ka, ka.’ An orchid’s a flower. Kind of thing Franky likes to receive from that doctor chap of hers,” Dog explained, shaking his head.

“She wouldn’t want some huge aquatic mammal arriving in the
post, would she?” Jeeves taunted, crossing his arms with an air of finality.

“Ten seconds on Birdcage!” shouted Dog, and to Jonah’s amazement the whole of the Bunker fell on Birdcage, throwing him to the ground as they jumped on top of him.

Franky was the only one who stood to the side, and she rolled her eyes at Jonah before calling out “a one stupid trader, a two stupid traders, a three stupid traders” like one of the referees in WWF Wrestling.

Birdcage remained pinned down on the ground, and Jonah could see punches and knees being aimed at him. Milkshake stood to the side kicking him and chanting, “You’re thick and you know you are, you’re thick and you know you are …”

“A four stupid traders, a five stupid traders, a six stupid traders, a seven stupid traders …” counted Franky. As she yelled, the Bunker Boys continued to pummel Birdcage, who could be heard screaming, “Ow!” and “Get off!”

“An eight stupid traders, a nine stupid traders, a ten stupid traders. OFF!” she shouted, and instantly the fight broke up.

The traders returned to their seats, giggling like crazy while Birdcage stood up and straightened his clothes, also laughing. “All right, all right. I am a stupid trader. BUT AT LEAST I’M NOT POOR!” he screamed at the top of his voice.

“Yeah!” shouted the others in unison.

Jonah stood alone, stunned at what he had just witnessed. The Baron had said that the men who worked directly with his dad were cavemen. If so, what did that make the people who worked
for him
?

Franky stared at
Jonah for a few seconds before saying, “So you’re Biff’s son.” Now that she wasn’t screaming, Jonah could detect more of a foreign accent. She had dark makeup around her eyes and a heavy gold necklace around her throat.

“Um yes,” replied Jonah, glancing around to see if anyone else on the trading floor was behaving in a way that would suggest something unusual had occurred in the last twenty seconds. But nothing seemed to have changed: The murmuring and the shouting continued as before. Jonah looked back at Franky. “Yes. I’ve come to find out what he does at work,” he continued.

“Oh. That’s nice,” replied Franky flatly.

Jonah couldn’t help himself anymore. “What happened there?”

“What?” Franky seemed surprised at the question. “That pile-on? Don’t you do that at school?”

“Kind of,” said Jonah. “But we’re kids. You’re grown-ups.”

“Ha!” laughed Franky. “Does that make a difference?”

Jonah tried to picture his father doing something like that. “My dad wouldn’t do that.”

Franky’s face turned serious. “No. Your dad wouldn’t do that, would he? He’s very somber, isn’t he?”

Jonah nodded. “But all the grown-ups I know are like that.” He thought of his teachers. Not even Mr. Jagger, his science teacher, would allow a brawl like that, and he was pretty mad.

“Well,” said Franky, smiling again, “we’re not like that. We’re Whistlers. They’re all Drizzlers.”

The Baron had also mentioned Whistlers and Drizzlers, but the distinction wasn’t one Jonah had heard previously. “What are Whistlers and Drizzlers?” Jonah asked.

Franky laughed again. “It’s a Baronism. He says the world is split into two kinds of people. There are the Whistlers, who like to have fun, break the rules, take risks, and if things go bad, they forget about it and move on to something else. And there are the Drizzlers, who complain all the time and stick to the rules and are scared to do anything out of the ordinary because it might go wrong.”

“But that’s not our style, is it?” boomed a voice. The Baron was back and—though Jonah couldn’t be sure—it looked like his mustache had curled up even more definitively during his brief absence, as if it had been electrified by the excitement in the air.

Franky grinned at him admiringly. The others acknowledged him with a nod or another small salute.

“Here on the Prop desk it’s Whistler wonderland! Now let’s go to the Cockpit and get you settled in.”

Jonah glanced around frantically. “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t know what you mean.” He grimaced, afraid that he was being a thicko.

The Baron gave a dismissive wave. “Why would you, sonny? We use a whole different language here: Whistlers, Drizzlers, longs, shorts, bulls, bears, dragons, tigers. You’ll pick it up.” The Baron paused. “They didn’t come up with a nickname for you while I was gone, did they?”

Jonah shook his head. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he heard Birdcage whisper “orchid” under his breath.

“Good. Glad to see they waited for me to make the big decisions.” The Baron placed his hand on Jonah’s shoulder and led him to the double desk onto which he’d thrown his bag a few minutes earlier. “This here’s my desk, but we call it the Cockpit. It’s the control center for the entire Prop desk.”

There was that phrase again. Jonah gazed up at the Baron quizzically. “I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t know what a Prop desk is either.”

The Baron pulled out a chair for Jonah and signaled for him to sit down. “Never apologize, sonny. You’re better than that. And why should you know what I’m talking about anyway?”