Colin Harrison - The Finder

Martz loved Gooseman's Nursery. He drove there several times a year. Connie didn't even know it existed. Only his first wife knew and that was because they'd picked out some ornamental plantings there. Years back. Many houses ago. That first weekend place had been bulldozed and built over with an eleven-thousand-square-foot shingle-style monstrosity that was itself bulldozed and built over with a twenty-three-thousand-square-foot Tuscan villa. He didn't like to think about it, just enjoyed wandering through the cedars and spruces, in particular, sitting on a favorite bench to rest. Which is what he did now, enjoying the sweat of walking in the sun, the smell of the trees.

He looked at his watch. Time now.

"I got the wrong row," croaked a voice.

A man in plaid shorts and a white tennis shirt appeared from between the pine trees. He shuffled a bit, watching his footing in the sand, his thin calves spidered with varicose veins.

"Right here," Martz said, not bothering to stand but lifting his hand to shake the hand of Elliot Sassoon.

"How are you, Bill?"

"Worse than ever."

Elliot laughed as he sat down. "You always say that."

Martz nodded. "Hey, thanks for making the trip."

Elliot shrugged. "For you, my friend, the world. It's been awhile."

"Couple, five years."

"Still with Connie? Because if you're not, I want her number."

"Still with her."

"I figure if she'll look at you, she'll look at me."

"She's probably looking at a few other guys, not that I could possibly blame her. What about you?"

"I'm diabetic now, that's my big news. Just take pills. Can't have sugar."

"You look thinner."

Elliot shrugged. "We're old men now, Bill."

"I know guys taking human growth hormone, swear by it."

Elliot shrugged. Death stalked everyone. "So what are we doing today?"

Martz's gaze went soft as he seemed to peer into the cave of his own imagination. Things lived in there, monstrous desires, wriggling schemes, petrified memories. "I'm going to do a lift soon, and I'm looking for a little help."

"When?"

"Soon. I'm thinking we start Monday night."

"That is soon. What's the play?"

"It's Good Pharma. I came in for big shares. I'm negatively leveraged at around three hundred million."

"Big position."

"It's down a lot, thirty percent."

" Big hole. I thought that was a good story. Promising stuff in the pipeline."

"It is. Or was, anyway. There's some kind of leak and some Chinese guys rode it down. Made a lot on shorts. I'm not short on it, though, I need that price to come up."

Elliot nodded.

"I need to do this one thing and then dial it all back, Elliot. I got Connie, health pressures, I just want to clean up this little problem, go out on top, hand it over to the young cowboys."

"Couldn't understand more. What's the total cap?"

"About thirty bil."

Elliot hummed through his nose.

"I think we can move it with four hundred million," Martz said.

"I don't have that kind of cash today. We can drop some things in the morning."

"It's going to come quick."

"Tell me the numbers? I haven't been following it."

"It's riding around thirty-one. I want to get it up to forty-five, I'll take forty-three. I'd appreciate help around thirty-four as it's getting started, and maybe you'd get out at thirty-eight?"

"I'd rather get in at thirty-two, get out at thirty-five, six."

Martz smiled. "Knew you'd say that."

"I knew you knew."

"Okay, fine. Thirty-two on one end, thirty-six on the other."

"Anything else to tell?"

"Get your money ready. Be ready to night-trade. We're going to run this against a bunch of Chinese bastards who won't notice until their normal day of trading."

"Volume or speed?"

"I'll let you know how it will work. I don't have all the pieces in place yet."

"But you will? Because if I'm really going to get the cash together, not wait until the next meeting…"

"I'm getting the pieces into place. Don't worry."

"I'm too old to worry. Instead I just mentally masticate."

"Masturbate?"

"That would be a most welcome sensation. I said masticate. You know, chew."

The two men rose and ambled along the sandy trail between the rows of six-foot pine trees. As they neared the busier section of the nursery, Elliot turned to Bill and shook his hand. "Okay, big guy."

Bill watched Elliot trudge along in front of him. He stood a minute or two longer, to be sure Elliot left first. Connie thought he'd gone out to get the newspaper. He didn't like to do lifts, had only performed four in the last fifteen years, all with Elliot. Each case involved a smaller company on the way up, where something anomalous had driven the share price lower, interrupted the story line. Lifts were risky: they might fail after a lot of money got spent. The share price could stay sticky, not move much, too many people selling into the artificial buying. It could even go down. That had been known to happen; the volume rose but the price dropped slightly as shareholders looked to unload big positions without getting whacked. A lift was also risky, if the SEC noticed. Elliot was the best in the business, but that didn't mean he was invincible.

I'm really going to do this, Martz told himself glumly. I'm fucking how old and I'm still doing this shit? He found his car and buckled himself in. He needed Tom Reilly in his back pocket and he needed Chen. Well, he had Chen, who had called him just a few hours after the golden bull was delivered. They were on for tomorrow night. A surge of aggression ran through him as he gunned the car into traffic. He flipped open his cell phone as he drove, in violation of New York State law, and dialed his executive assistant, even though it was Saturday morning. "Call Kepler in China and transfer me," he ordered. The connection took a moment.

"Bill?"

"What'd you get on Chen?"

"Good bit. Hooked in to the biggest guys. Banks, heavy industry. Fancies himself a master of the universe. He's in New York looking for his sister. We got that through his personal assistant."

He knew this already, of course. But he needed to learn more before their dinner the next evening.

"He's a principal investor in the Dwai Group, which is getting big now. Many of their members have seats or affiliations on the Shanghai Exchange. They are very tough investors. My gut feeling is that if he were to call up some big pals and green-light a major move on an American stock, then they would take him at his word. He's made big money for people, he'd be in the country, they'd think he was talking to guys like you, whoever, you know, and they'd probably sign up, take the shot. But he's very loyal to these people, Bill, he's not just going to roll over."

"He needs the proper motivation."

"Don't we all."

Yes, Martz thought after hanging up. That's the part I don't have yet. I'm an old guy with a bad prostate and a wife with beautiful fake tits and my happiness rides now on understanding a young scam artist who crawled out of the gutter in Shanghai. Utterly ridiculous, except that it made absolutely perfect sense.

Violet had called him, a most unusual event. He waited for the buzzer, then climbed the stairs. She was in bed, shades drawn, smoking, a pile of magazines on the bedspread.

"Jesus, Violet, why don't you kind of, you know, get it together a bit, you know?"

She shifted her large bulk under the covers. "Can't, baby."

"Why?"

"Got what I need, more or less."

"So, what did you want?"

"I heard something that's going to interest you a lot."

"What?"

"Just pour me one first, okay?"

He went to the dresser. The bottle he'd brought her the day before was still there, half empty.

"So listen, Victor, I was talking to some people and they were saying about those girls who were found out by the beach-"