Alley was standing on the crest of a yellow hillside. It was the hill next to the house where Iris grew up. Slender, dry weeds undulated in the wind. Alley waved his arms and gestured for Iris to climb. It took a long time, but she finally stood next to him. Alley’s face was shiny caramel, his eyes were chocolate, and his hair was coal. He laughed at her, a gurgling sound, and handed her a knife. She swallowed it. She was supposed to. Then she saw the knife lying on the dirt. She grabbed her middle but there was no wound. The knife had passed through her. She was whole. She was safe. She turned to looked at Alley and share her amazement but they were standing on a city street and Alley was on the ground, bleeding through big holes in his chest. He handed her a bloody key. “Ba smard, Iiiiirssss.”
Iris started awake ten minutes before the New Age music clicked on, her heart pounding hard against her ribs. She wrestled with the damp sheet that shrouded her legs and sat up through dense layers. The clock read 4:25a.
“What day is it?” She had to think about it. “Work day. School day. Friday. Thank God.”
She pawed through her closet, throwing discards onto the bed in a heap. Everything was either wrinkled or spotted. Nothing to wear. She had nothing to wear. She’d paced the floor last night until it was almost time to get up, mourning Alley, reviling Billy Drye, lecturing Teddy, and cursing John Somers for his hidden agenda. Seduced and betrayed. Screw him. Screw all of ‘em. Every last one.
She pulled a pair of panty hose from the dirty clothes hamper, unballed them, and held them to her nose. They’d do. She rifled through her lingerie drawer and settled on a stretched-out, fraying bra. It was her statement. To hell with everyone.
Shower, coffee, lotion, deodorant, fragrance, clothes, hair, jewelry, shoes, jacket, purse, briefcase, pull-out stereo.
She grabbed the rest of her makeup, filled her commuter mug again, and grabbed the Rodeo Drive shopping bag with the cash and stock certificates. It was coming with her. It was like leaving Alley behind.
At 5:30, she pulled out the choke on the TR, stepped on the accelerator twice and turned the ignition key. The engine roared in the garage. She finished her makeup in the rearview mirror by flashlight, pulled the TR out five feet, and examined the pattern of its nightly excretions. There was a new plop of undetermined origin. Great. Just freaking great.
The radio announcer said there had been a 3.9 temblor during the night.
“Alley’s dead, I have a pile of cash in a plastic bag, John Somers appears from never-never land, Los Angeles is falling into the ocean, and I’m going to work,” she said to the TR.
At the mouth of the Ten, she floored the TR like there was no tomorrow. “Chris Columbus. It’s you and me, babe.”
At the office, individual concerns had been gray color-washed by quotidian routine. Jaynie showed a temp how to sort the mail. Joe Campbell read The Wall Street Journal in his office. Iris met his eye and her stomach did an adolescent somersault. The Boys’ Club was clustered around Billy Drye, looking over his shoulder and snickering. Their voices dropped when they saw Iris.
“Morning boys,” she said.
They nodded and pointed. A simple “good morning” didn’t carry quite the right cachet.
Stan Raab pushed past Iris in the narrow corridor, putting his hand on her lower back as he walked by. “Hi, sweetheart.”
“Morning, doll,” she retorted.
Stan half turned, wondering if he’d heard correctly, then kept walking.
Teddy read a pink newspaper at his desk and didn’t look up when Iris sat down. She threw her purse and the Rodeo Drive shopping bag in her lower left drawer and slammed the drawer hard.
Teddy’s jaw tightened in his focused denial of her existence.
Iris persisted, her bad mood finding an outlet in a mean kid’s taunt. She circled her palm on his shiny, bald pate. “Now I know it’s going to be a good day.”
“Knock it off.”
“Teddy, sweetheart, baby cakes… so glum on a Friday morning?”
Teddy finally looked up at her.
“Cripes! What happened to you?”
Teddy’s right eye and cheek were flowering in shades of red, black, and blue. “I ran into a door.”
“It must have been wearing brass knuckles.”
Teddy looked as if he might cry. “Iris, everything’s out of control.”
“Get the monkey off your back.”
“Monkey? Shit. That’s what I get for asking Ms. Straight Arrow. You don’t understand. Forget it.”
“Right.”
Teddy ran a pen down the columns of the pink newspaper.
“Gonna buy some penny stocks from the pink sheets?”
“Yeah, so?” He sniffed and pulled at his nostrils.
“Okay. I guess we’re not talking about pink sheets. Want to ride together to Alley’s funeral tomorrow?”
“I’m not going.”
“Why not?”
“Unsweet. I don’t need to see a dead man.”
“C’mon, Teddy. It’s Alley’s funeral.”
“You don’t give up, do you?”
“I’m in sales. I don’t know how to take no for an answer.”
“Isn’t the man poison going?”
“I assume you’re mean Jaynie? She’s going to a wedding.”
“Why? To tell them they’re making a mistake?”
“Teddy, come with me.”
“Iris, you’re a pain in the ass.”
“Yeah… What’s your point?”
“All right. Fine. You win. I’ll go.”
“I’ll pick you up tomorrow at ten.”
Billy Drye walked past Iris’s desk and dropped a Polaroid snapshot on it. It was Billy standing with his suit pants around his ankles, being given a blow job by a woman with long, dark hair. The woman was holding her hair away from her face to give the camera a clear view. A tense silence fell over The Boys’ Club clustered in the cubicles behind her. There was money on this one.
Iris’s face flushed red with anger and humiliation. She resisted the urge to grab scissors and cut the photo into a thousand pieces and then do the same thing to Drye’s flesh. But she would not let him win.
She counted slowly to ten and regained a skittish control. She turned around and smiled big and disarmingly, then held her hand in front of her face with her thumb and forefinger measuring a two-inch length.
The group whooped and hooted. That Iris.
Billy Drye laughed too, an insincere good sport, and paid off those who had bet on Iris’s moxie. He stopped laughing when Iris took a pair of scissors from her desk and snipped the photo in two, turning him into a eunuch with one clip. She dropped the pieces into her wastebasket.
“Hey!” Drye yelled, walking fast down the corridor and retrieving the two pieces. “That’s mine.”
“I thought it was a gift.”
He fit the pieces together and glared at her.
She snipped the scissors together sharply three or four times. “Come into my parlor?”
The market opened.
“Albuquerque munis at ten and five points.”
“Do a call at seventeen. It’s going up.”
“Make me a price on six month T-Bills. C’mon, you can do better than that. Look, shit for brains, get me a better deal. This is bullshit. How the hell do you expect me to sell this crap?”
“Dickhead, you wrote this order wrong, I said thirty-four and a half, not thirty-four and two points. Yeah, well, fuck you. You just cost the firm ten grand.”
Iris scanned the names on the prospect list that she had prepared earlier in the week and flexed her dialing fingers.
“The cold call cowgirl rides again.” She dialed the first number. “Hello. Is Jerry there?”
“Who’s calling?”
“Iris.”
“What does it concern?”
“It’s personal.”
She counted on the secretary figuring the guy was fooling around on his wife and putting her through without asking questions. Maybe the guy was single. Better yet.
“Hi, Jerry. You don’t know me and I’m probably an intrusion right now but you’re obviously a person with substantial net worth and business acumen and a person like you is busier making money than investing it. My business acumen is in turning money into more money.”
“I don’t have time for this.”
“We’re all busy, Jerry, but invest just a small amount of time with me. It’ll be worth your while. I’m Iris Thorne from McKinney Alitzer and I have high-caliber credentials just like you. I also have an MBA from a top school and I’ve made a lot of money for busy business people like yourself.”
“I have another call on hold.”
“So do I, Jerry. That’s why I’m only going to take five minutes of your time. Our time is valuable and so is the money we work so hard for. Jerry, you know that it’s not what you earn but what you keep. My return averages about one hundred twenty-five percent. My firm has been involved in venture capital deals where the return was two hundred percent.”
“I’m sure you’re a nice lady, but I already have another broker.”
“No doubt someone with your credentials does, but I bet your broker doesn’t have the research department that McKinney Alitzer has. I can save you money on your taxes. Just let me know what your needs are and I’m sure I can satisfy them with McKinney Alitzer’s diversity of products.”
“Well, taxes are eating me alive.”
Hooked him.
Teddy opened his fountain pen and ran it down the stock listings in the pink sheets.
“Aaron Enterprises, closing at two and a half cents. Accfnds, what’s that, Accurate Funds? AcmeInc. They’re kidding. The CEO is the Roadrunner, right? Closing at two. What a racket. Hello. Advanced Products, closed yesterday at a penny a share.”
Teddy wrote a buy for five hundred thousand shares of Advanced Products for Salvatore Lambertini. Then he wrote a buy order for himself for five hundred thousand shares.
“Advanced Products. Nice name. Good name. What do you guys do for a living? With a name like that, I’d say you make something high-tech. Computer components. That’s it.”
Teddy spun his Rolodex and punched a telephone number into the phone dial. He ran his hand through his sparse hair as he waited for someone to answer.
“Sammy? Hi, it’s Ted with McKinney Alitzer. So, how did the tables at the Four Queens treat you? No, I talked to Eddie for a couple hours. We’re putting a deal together.
“Listen. I have something really hot. Advanced Products. It’s a little firm that makes some sort of electrical components for personal computers. Yeah, right, electronic, not electric. What the fuck do I know about computers? I just know a good deal when I see one. They’ve just got a contract with IBM and they’re going to be hot. The stock’s undervalued at a penny a share. Of course it’s legit. Sammy! This is Teddy! I can put you in one hundred thousand shares for a thousand bucks. You can paper your bedroom with the certificates. See, penny stocks only have to go up a penny in price to make some nice walking around money. No, you can’t track it on Nasdaq. It’s listed in something called the pink sheets. Let’s write an order for two hundred thousand. That’s my boy.”
Teddy spun the Rolodex again.
“Bill? I’ve got something really hot but a little out of the ordinary for your personal account, but I know you’re a risk-taker and know a bargain when you see one. Listen, consider a penny stock called Advanced Products. Yeah, I know there’s been a lot of press on penny stocks. Here’s the deal. Some sleazebag firms trade on stocks priced at a few cents a share, artificially creating a market and pushing up the price. With penny stocks, they can mark up the price one hundred percent, say from a penny to two cents, without the investor flinching.
“Then they hire this hungry sales force to sell the stuff to widows and orphans. Problem is, the widows and orphans buy product at a high price that they can’t resell because the stock is worthless. In the meantime, the firm makes out and the sales turkeys make a commission on every transaction, buy or sell.
“But you know me. This isn’t a boiler room. This is legit. If I hear about something, I naturally want to pass it on to my better clients. Could you handle two hundred thousand shares? One hundred thousand? Great.” He hung up.
“Billyboy, don’t worry. I won’t stiff a friend.”
Teddy drew a grid on a yellow pad and labeled the columns: Customer, Original Price, Trading Price, Customer Profit, and Commission.
In the Customer column, he listed: Salvatore Lambertini (Sally Lamb),Teddy Kraus, III, Sam Allen, Bill Zajack.
Next to their names, he listed the number of shares they bought and the price.
“Now, resell at a higher price. Create a market for this crap.”
Teddy went to a back storeroom and opened a cabinet door. Telephone books for the greater part of the United States were piled on top of each other with the spines facing out. He pulled one out of the stack. “Let’s see how this plays in Fresno.” Back at his desk, he dialed one of the Fresno numbers.
“This is Teddy. Is Carl there please? Carl, I’m Teddy Kraus from McKinney Alitzer and I—”
Carl of Fresno hung up in Teddy’s ear.
Teddy went to the next name. “Is this Mrs. Abel? This is Teddy Kraus from McKinney Alitzer. You don’t know me and I’m sure you’re very busy but my firm comes up with investment opportunities from time to time that are tailor made for people like you—”
Mrs. Abel said, “No, thank you,” and hung up.
Teddy went to the next name. “… who want to get into the stock market but just don’t know how and don’t have a lot of money to risk. You are of course familiar with McKinney…
“… Alitzer? We’re a full-line investment firm with seventy-five years of experience and an excellent track record. My personal credentials speak for themselves. You’ve seen the firm’s ads? Good. Then you know who you’re dealing with.”
The A’s weren’t panning out. Teddy turned to the B’s.
“I have a customer who just canceled a buy order for a stock called Advanced Products. It’s already gone up in price and I can offer you part of the trade the other investor canceled but only if you act right away. Could you handle a hundred thousand shares? How about fifty thousand at two cents a share?
“Sammy. Hi. Teddy. I have a buy order for the two hundred thousand shares of Advanced Products you just bought at a penny for two cents. You just made two grand, buddy, sitting on your butt watching T.V. Isn’t America great? Let’s roll that over into another penny stock.
“Mr. Lystrum, just think, you could own a hundred thousand shares of stock for just two thousand dollars at four cents a share.”
It was 12:00. “Bill, I can sell your hundred thousand for two cents.”
Teddy filled in the grid on his yellow pad. Salvatore Lambertini. Buy five hundred thousand at one cent. Sell two hundred thousand at two cents. Two-thousand-dollar customer profit. Sell three hundred thousand at four cents. Nine-thousand-dollar customer profit. Same profit for Teddy plus the commission on the sales. Sammy’s two-thousand-dollar profit rolls over into another stock. Bill takes out his thousand profit. Teddy tracked the buys and sells down the page.
The customers who bought early at a low price made money on the trades that Teddy made with others at a higher price. After he found buyers at four cents, Teddy stopped cold calling.
“Mr. Lystrum,” Teddy said to himself, “lotsa luck finding a buyer for your hundred thousand shares of Advanced Products at four cents. Maybe you can find out what they do for a living.”
Iris returned to her desk with a salad. “Lunch wagon’s here. Aren’t you eating?”
“Not hungry.”
“What the hell have you been doing all morning?”
“Making the American dream real for a few at the expense of many.”
“What?”
Teddy took the grid and put it into the top drawer of his desk. “Never mind.” He put his jacket on and patted his inside pocket, feeling for the vial. “I’m going out for a few minutes. See ya, cowgirl.”