Dead Cat Bounce (3 page)

“… we make money for our clients by trading in the financial markets, stocks and shares mainly.”

Jonah didn’t want his father to think that he didn’t care about what he was saying, especially after he had finally gone to the trouble of describing things to him. But when he saw a bright red Ferrari roaring into an underground parking garage, it was too much for him. “That’s so coooool!” he exclaimed and immediately threw his hand over his mouth in embarrassment.

His father ceased talking and shook his head in apparent despair. “Hopefully, you’ll be less distracted when we get inside,” he said and pushed his way through a huge glass revolving door, muttering to himself, “It’s only a bloody car.”

Jonah stayed outside for a moment watching the red Ferrari disappear and noticing that it had driven into the garage of the same building he was about to enter.
Only a bloody car!
Their Volvo was only a bloody car; that red streak of speed was something else entirely.

He pushed his own way through the revolving doors and entered a cavernous reception area with a ceiling as tall as any he’d seen in a church. Ahead of him, his father was striding off to the left toward a turnstile. Jonah hurried after him, but before he had taken two steps, a burly man in a navy uniform stepped forward and reached his hand out, stopping Jonah in his tracks. “Hold on there little fella,” he said gruffly. “We need to take your photograph and get you a pass.”

Jonah saw his father halt and spin around. “He’s my son,” he snapped. “Does he really need a pass? I’m late enough as it is.”

“Everyone needs a pass, sir,” the security guard said firmly, turning Jonah around and propelling him toward a long, high desk with
HELSBY, CATTERMOLE, & PARTNERS
emblazoned on the front of it. “It won’t take a second.”

Jonah’s mouth dropped open.

Above the reception desk was a huge fish tank built into the wall. And inside the fish tank were two sharks, circling menacingly. He gulped.

“Can we have a pass for this young man?” asked the security guard as Jonah continued to stare.

“Of course, Bill,” said the female receptionist. “What’s your name?” she asked, more to Jonah’s back than to Jonah directly. He was still transfixed by the sharks.

Jonah felt a tap on his shoulder and tore his eyes away from the tank in front of him. “Tell the lady your name,” said the security guard. “And smile for the camera.”

Jonah looked up at the receptionist, still thinking about sharks, gave his name, and smiled as she took his photo with a webcam fixed to the top of her computer screen.

Almost immediately she was handing the security guard a badge, which he pinned on Jonah’s chest. “There you go,” he said. Jonah looked down at the photo on the badge, seeing his pale skin, dark brown eyes, and fair, straight hair. Next to his photo was printed his name and the word
VISITOR
.

“Welcome to Hellcat,” said the security guard.

Jonah looked up at him. “Hellcat?” he asked quizzically.

The security guard furrowed his brow as if deciding whether he’d said something he wasn’t supposed to. “You had better ask your dad about that one. Go on, I think he’s in a hurry.”

Jonah nodded and walked swiftly over to his father, who was standing on the other side of the entry turnstiles, tapping his foot once more. A glass gate next to the turnstiles magically opened for Jonah to join him, and David immediately started off toward some escalators as soon as his son was through. “What’s Hellcat?” Jonah asked, once more scrambling to keep up with his father’s relentless pace.

“It’s the bank’s nickname,” his father replied. “It comes from the first letters of our real name: Helsby Cattermole.”

Jonah broke it down in his head, H-e-l from Helsby. C-a-t from Cattermole. “You’re missing an
l
,” he said.

“Well, what would you have liked for us to have been called?” his father replied, throwing an arm up in exasperation.

“No, it’s cool. I just wanted to check.” Jonah answered promptly, stepping on the escalator. He decided to switch tactics. “Were those really sharks?” he asked.

“Yes,” said David, three steps further up the escalator. “Bit silly if you ask me, but it’s supposed to say something about the way we
operate; supposed to impress our clients. We actually call the whole reception area the Shark Tank.”

Jonah closed the gap on his father as they climbed upward. He didn’t think the sharks were silly. Sharks were at the top of the food chain. Like lions. And Ferraris.

A fat man descending on the down escalator greeted Jonah’s father. “Morning, Biff.”

“Morning, Flash. Asia behaving?” David replied.

“Not too bad,” said the fat man as he passed.

Jonah glanced behind him at the man and then back at his father as they reached the top and began marching down a long corridor. “Why did he call you Biff?” he asked.

“That’s my nickname. Like the bank has a nickname, most of us here do as well.”

Jonah thought for a second. “Isn’t Biff the guy from
Back to the Future
?”

“Yes,” replied David, marching on.

“Isn’t he the bully who’s always beating people up?”

David stopped suddenly and looked his son up and down as if deciding how much more he could take. “He is. But I’m called Biff because I refused to fight someone.”

Jonah screwed up his face, puzzled. “But that doesn’t make sense,” he insisted.

“A lot of nicknames here are opposites. You get used to it.” His father shrugged and started walking again.

“Would I get a nickname if I worked here?” Jonah asked.

“What?”

“Would I get a nickname?” He’d always wanted a nickname, but
the nearest he’d gotten at school was some of the seniors calling him “Lighty.”

“Probably,” said David into space.

“Cool. Do you get to pick?” Jonah asked. He didn’t wait for his father to respond. “Because I don’t want a name like yours, the name of some huge jerk.” As soon as he said it he knew it had been a stupid thing to say. His eyes caught his father’s, and for a moment, Jonah and David stared at each other, the years of mutual pain and disappointment swimming beneath the surface.

David turned away. They had come to a halt in front of a set of huge double doors. He ran his ID card over a sensor on the right and glanced back at Jonah. “Good thing you don’t work here then, isn’t it?”

But Jonah wasn’t listening.

The doors had opened.

“Wow!” exclaimed Jonah,
his mouth agape. In front of him rows and rows of desks filled the biggest room he’d ever seen in his life, stretching away the length of a football field. The desks were jammed together in blocks of eight and sixteen, and on each desk were at least two computer screens. Some had four. The screens seemed to move with a life of their own, flashing and twinkling like hyperactive Christmas trees. Each desk had a chair with a jacket hung on the back, and in each chair there was a person. Some were sitting forward, hunkered down, their faces intent, voices low. Some were leaning back, relaxed, feet on the desk, maybe a smile on their faces. Many were standing, talking, hands waving, agitated, excited, urgent. Everyone was attached to a phone or two: clamped to the right ear, gripped in the right hand; clamped to the left ear, right arm curled over the head; held out in front like a cat grabbed by its scruff; or dangling by the cord like a condemned man.

“Wow!” said Jonah for a second time, still not moving. His skin
tingled. There was electricity and tension in the air. He had the same feeling that he had before a race or an exam—that knot in his stomach, that feeling of stepping into the unknown with only his wits to carry him forward. His fingers twitched.

He breathed deeply through his nose. Something deep, deep down inside him was waking up. His nostrils flared and his pulse quickened. A multilayered scent pervaded the room. There was the cold smell of technology, of computers and metal and glass and air-conditioning. There was the warm smell of coffee and bacon and toast. But underneath these was a subtle odor that Jonah couldn’t immediately identify. It was primeval and fundamental. It brought images of gladiators to his mind; knights on horses standing in a line, lances lowered; infantrymen charging over the top of a trench, bayonets fixed to their rifles, their faces contorted into screams of anger and terror.
Yes, that was it!
It was the smell of battle.

“Come along,” said David. “It’s hardly the Grand Canyon.”

Jonah stood as tall as he could, pushing his shoulders back as if he were a soldier, and stepped out onto the trading floor for the first time.

He hoped it wouldn’t be the last.

As they walked toward David’s desk a third of the way down the second row from the left, Jonah became enveloped by the noise. The grumbling and shouting seemed to be sucked up into the cavernous space and then thrown back downward in a wall of white noise pierced by screams and yells: “Buy two thousand!” “Sell four thousand!” “Yours!” “Mine!” “GOTCHA!”

David shook his head. “The beginning of the day is usually the busiest,” he said. “It’ll calm down later.”

Jonah wasn’t so sure he wanted it to calm down.

They arrived at David’s desk, which was in a block of eight, all of which were made out of artificial wood and separated by glass partitions. The men on either side were younger than his dad and were both talking on the phone. Jonah thought that they must be brothers as no two people could have had such prominent brows and such messy hair without being related. They stared unpleasantly at Jonah and his father, and the one on the left covered the mouthpiece on his phone and snarled, “Scrotycz is after you, Biff. Better jump to it.” Then he looked directly at Jonah and said, “I didn’t know we were going midget bowling later!” before bursting out laughing and returning to his telephone call without waiting for a response.

Jonah sensed his father tense up as he ushered Jonah to his desk. Jonah placed his half-empty coffee cup on top of the desk and glanced around, unsurprised to discover that there wasn’t a single family photo or personal keepsake. In fact, the desk was completely bare save for three yellow Stickies. Jonah watched his father read each one before tearing them off the desk and throwing them in the trash, mumbling under his breath, “Bloody Scrotycz.”

“Why is there a jacket on the back of your chair? Did you leave it behind?” Jonah asked.

“It’s a tradition,” said David as he pulled up a second chair for Jonah to sit in. “Once upon a time it was a trick to fool your boss that you were on the trading floor, making money, rather than out at lunch. Everyone had two jackets. One to wear and one for the chair.” David took his jacket off and hung it on the back of Jonah’s chair. “There you go. Now you’ve got one too,” he said. He undid the buttons on the cuffs of his shirt and rolled up his sleeves.

“Who’s Scrotycz?” Jonah asked, also rolling up his sleeves to match his dad and noticing that they were two of the only people on the floor who weren’t wearing ties.

“He’s one of my clients,” David replied. “I’ll call him in a minute.”

“And your clients are the people whose money you look after?” asked Jonah, recalling the bits and pieces he’d gleaned from the phone calls his father often had to take over dinner.

“Yes, that’s right. And I try to earn them extra money by trading in the financial markets.” David rolled his chair around so that he was facing Jonah directly.

“Have all of your clients got such weird names?”

“Some do. Scrotycz is Russian, which is why his name seems so unusual.”

Jonah sat up straighter. “You speak Russian, don’t you?” he said quite loudly so that the other men would hear him. He bet
they
couldn’t speak Russian.

“Correct,” replied David, his voice much softer than Jonah’s. “It’s what got me into the City of London. You know I was brought up in Africa and only moved to England when I was twenty?”

Jonah nodded.

“Well, when I arrived, I first joined a shipping company that traded with Russia. After a couple of years I got a job with a bank and a few years later I moved here when Helsby Cattermole started doing business with Russia. Russia has some very rich people.”

“Do you make them a lot of money?” Jonah asked, sucking down one last big gulp of coffee.

“No. My job is to make them some money, but mainly to make
sure they don’t lose any.” David threw his empty cappuccino cup into the trash.

“Oh. I thought you said you made more money than anyone else here.” The disappointment was clear in Jonah’s voice. He dropped his own empty drink into the waste bin.

“No, I said the
bank
earned more money,” David corrected. “There are other traders here who try to make their clients huge amounts.”

Jonah wondered if one of those people was the driver of the red Ferrari he’d seen earlier. His gaze drifted to a few of the other men on the floor.

David powered up his computer screens before continuing with his explanation. “But those traders also take a lot of risks, so they might actually end up losing their clients’ money instead.” He looked at Jonah to see if he had understood, but Jonah had already moved on to his next question.

“So why don’t clients give all their money to those traders?”

David banged his fist against the desk and glared at Jonah. “What did I just say?” he snapped.

Jonah shuddered. He’d heard that tone of voice before. “Sorry, Dad,” he said meekly.

The two cavemen-looking guys snickered.

“So pay attention. You came here to find out what I do, so do me the favor and listen when I’m telling you.”

Jonah shrank back in his chair and watched David take out his wallet, count out a hundred pounds, and put the money on the desk.

“Ready,” he demanded.

“Yes,” said Jonah.

“Good. Say you had a hundred pounds to save. You could put it in a bank and get some interest, say five pounds.” He added five pounds from his wallet to the notes on the desk. “You also wouldn’t lose any of your money, and because of that, your investment strategy would be absolutely risk-free. Does that make sense?”