Deadly Day Trading Read online

  DEADLY DAY TRADING

  Andres Kabel

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  MEET THE AUTHOR

  MY THANKS

  PROLOGUE

  There’s no such thing as a bad trading day, Irene Skews, day trader magnifico, reminded herself, her hand poised over the keyboard, index finger lifted. Click! Her copious bangles pealed against the desk. Her order—the sale of a thousand Solution 6 shares at $18.10—vanished, to be rewarded with the computerized chime of a trade consummated.

  Two sleeps until Christmas, in the year of 1999, and Irene wished only that the day after tomorrow could be a trading day. For here amongst the buccaneers of Tech Power Trading, she counted herself happy.

  In front of her, overlapping windows on the screen scrolled with share prices, order queues, market indices, and one-line news items—endless hieroglyphics in reds and greens and whites. She inhaled the aroma of the trading room: coffee, McDonald’s fries, sweat, the sour smell she called adrenaline rather than fear. The public address system cooed: “All Ords 3,121, down 20.” She heard responding groans, and a choked obscenity.

  She blew a kiss into the air and wheeled her office chair back from the screen to survey the two rows of shoulder-height cubicles, bookmarked by huge television screens at both ends.

  A prickle traversed the back of her neck.

  Mostly the traders were doing what they paid TPT for, feverishly buying and selling shares. But by the coffee table halfway down the aisle, a handful of fellow traders chatted. Len Maguire stroked his beard. The sweetie-pie Singaporean, Lawrence Lim, jiggled a teabag. Gil Oldfield had his handsome head lowered. What was awry?

  Perhaps her qualms were merely the inevitable sense of dislocation upon returning to the physical world. Immersed chaos was Irene’s way, absorption in the never-ending flow of stock market data, newspapers, emails, newsletters, and loudspeaker announcements. She lived and breathed that babble of information.

  Last night Irene had spent hours on HotCopper, the online chat site for like-minded investment enthusiasts. She had devoured the stunning news of opportunity: Nasdaq, American home to the booming dot-coms, had risen—again!—26 points to 3,937. But in the morning, as she digested the ten o’clock opening trades on the Australian Stock Exchange, instead of rushing into the stocks hyped overnight, she had paid heed to the info babble.

  Over the first half-hour of trading, she’d concentrated on exiting every one of her positions. Pat-on-the-back time, she now breathed, for the All Ords index had tumbled, all arrows down, all colors red.

  Tech Power Trading’s twig of a receptionist was slanting the banks of venetian blinds facing the sunshine pouring in from Collins Street.

  Irene said, “You’re a wonder, dear.” She liked Robyn, even if the poor girl looked permanently stunned. “Glare simply has to be a trader’s worst enemy.”

  Robyn gave a hesitant smile.

  Irene couldn’t shake her edginess. She rose, straightened her jacket, and made for the coffee area.

  “…that is the key, I believe.” Lawrence Lim’s soft accented English was barely audible above the noise. “I do believe watching the market can help. Signs of sustained strength or weakness, that’s what I look for.”

  Gil Oldfield wasn’t paying attention. His tanned face, with its customary early shadow, was directed at a television interview. Formerly a “real” share trading professional, Gil sneered at TPT’s day traders, Irene especially.

  Something flickered at the edge of Irene’s mind.

  “Dears, wasn’t that a ride and a half this morning?” she said. “I knew it, simply knew it, in the very first minute. So what if Nasdaq had a wonderful day, so what? Where’s the good news in Australia, that’s what I want to know.”

  A brusque bark halted her words and she ceased stirring sugar into her tea. She looked up at the inflamed cheeks of Len Maguire. Santa, the traders called him, because of his large gut and bushy gingery-white beard.

  Len, here at the coffee spot…

  There it was.

  Len never, never ever, left his screen in the first two hours. His system, he’d once told her while wiping greasy fingers on his beard, that’s when the volatility peaks.

  Today Len wore a jacket, a bulky leather affair, over new jeans and his trademark Harley Davidson T-shirt. A heavy jacket, on a mild day forecast at twenty-three degrees…

  Irene gasped.

  Len jerked and looked directly at her. Behind smeared glasses his eyes blazed. A weird beatific smile lit his face. Then his hands sprouted squat metal extensions.

  “Listen up!” Len roared.

  Lawrence stumbled back into Gil. Heads appeared over cubicles. Irene lurched away from the guns.

  “You call this a tough trading day,” bellowed Len. “Invest in some of this, you bastards!”

  Before Irene could react, Len shoved both guns into Lawrence’s cheeks. Two retorts shattered the hush. Lawrence’s head exploded in a spray of red.

  Irene wailed, stumbled backward. Screams whizzed around her head. A man ran past, only to cry out and fall at another shot.

  Len screamed, “This is for the shorts.”

  Gil had become pinned under Lawrence’s body and was clawing at the bloodied weight.

  To Irene’s horror, Len chuckled. “Here’s to the bloody pro…fessionals.”

  He shouted something else, aimed, and fired once, then again. Gil’s twitching ceased.

  “No,” moaned Irene.

  All she could think of was home, her cats. Down the aisle, toward the rear of the office, between abandoned screens still scrolling in kaleidoscopic colors, she tottered backward on high heels, those darned rickety heels.

  Her nostrils stung with an acrid reek. Len was shooting steadily at traders rushing for the entrance. Bodies lay in the aisle like discarded mannequins.

  Her ankle turned on a high heel. She shook the shoe off. The screams had ceased, replaced by Len’s guttural raves and victims’ wet moans.

  She turned and ran, a limping gait with one shoe missing. Under the desk of the last cubicle, she glimpsed a face. Then she was past the television screen, around the corner, blubbering.

  “Irene!”

  Just fifty meters away, at the door of the training room, moonfaced Gus Y
oude signaled frantically.

  “Run!” Gus shouted.

  Irene staggered toward him. She risked a look over a shoulder.

  Len! He’d followed, was peering into the final cubicle. Shrill cackling filled her ears. A shot rang out.

  Irene lost her footing and plummeted onto carpet. Pain stabbed an elbow. She scrambled on hands and knees over the prickly surface toward manic voices.

  A quick backward glance froze her. Len had emerged from the cubicle. He was muttering and his beard was spotted with blood. He’d discarded one gun, now he raised the other. The mad eyes caught hers.

  Len began to run full tilt, every stride bringing him closer.

  Terror lent Irene wings. Somehow she was in the training room and Gus was piling tables against the door. Others were there, Robyn among them, but Irene barely noticed. She cowered in a corner, listening to her jewelry chime in time with her shakes.

  She heard shots, Len’s roar. Then later, much later it seemed, a universe away, sirens wailed.

  CHAPTER 1

  On the threshold of Draconi’s Bar & Grill, Peter Gentle paused to bask. His scalp tingled, heated from the daily constitutional, north this morning, almost as far as the Zoo.

  The soothing semi-light, the aromas of java and garlic and something human, the clatter of cutlery, the scrape of wooden chairs on wooden floor, best of all the enfolding hubbub of voices…

  He sighed.

  A gruff voice more familiar than his father’s interrupted his reverie. “I should have recorded that.”

  The voice belonged to Hector Lowe, Draconi’s owner and manager and seemingly round-the-clock maître d’. Peter smiled at the walrus face a foot below his eyes.

  “Come on, Hec. No way.”

  “Loud enough to bottle.”

  Hector shooed Peter through the maze of people squeezed about tiny round tables, to the imposing central bar fronting the kitchen.

  Peter blinked to clear the cobwebs around his cortex. Eight o’clock on a Wednesday morning was decidedly suboptimal, especially after a night shortened by a million gnawing tasks. Two AM had found him emailing off a progress report on the Yarra Building Society fraud job. Then his current online game of Diplomacy had snared his mind. An hour later he’d barely had the energy to wheel his chair back from the computer and shuffle to bed. As always these days, sleep had come instantly.

  Unlike Mick’s sleep, Peter thought. Last week, during one of their annoyingly rare get-togethers, Mick, his so-called partner in Tusk & Gentle, Private Investigators, had confided over a wine that he suffered from insomnia. Chronically. Had done so ever since his retrenchment eighteen months ago. Who would have thought? The hulk always seemed coiled with energy.

  Peter grabbed an Australian Financial Review from the rack and perched on a stool. He spied bacon and eggs sizzling over flames.

  “One of those, Hec. Make it a big one.”

  “Not long to go, is there? A month?” Hector lifted one foot onto the rail around the foot of the bar. “Until your license comes through.”

  “Something like that.”

  Gloom gripped Peter’s forehead. To think that “the world’s brainiest brain,” as Mick had branded him, would end up urinating into soft drink cans during all-night surveillance… Why not admit everything is going sour, he thought. Life’s a crock. Who to talk to? Mick’s Baltic face surfaced in his mind. Mick might understand.

  “I’ve got something that might interest you.” Hector gestured across the bar to the barista, employing sign language that Peter hoped would yield him a coffee. “Are you up on computer security?”

  “Of course,” Peter lied.

  His coffee arrived with a clatter and he dunked his nose in the long black’s rich steam. So I need your crumbs now, he thought. Not that he blamed Hec. All his friends were similarly solicitous, as if such a lowbrow occupation spurred images from World Vision. In fact, right now he was more than fully occupied, racking up poorly paid hours on this surveillance assignment for an insurance agent he knew from his Rock Mutual days. The salesman, married but besotted with a twenty-year-old Crown Casino employee, was being driven mad by the suspicion that the buxom croupier slept around. And via Harvey Jopling, Draconi’s other near-permanent patron, a half-interesting fraud job had arrived, something else to squeeze in on the eighth day of the week.

  “Do you know Jim Van Kressel?” Hector asked.

  Peter’s shrug was a twitch.

  “Jim popped in this morning.” Hector’s dolorous eyes were intense. “Carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. I mentioned you. He owns and runs Tech Power Trading, that share trading place up Collins, you know, the one—”

  “The massacre!” Peter’s eyes widened. “I knew I’d heard the name. Jesus. Surely the place closed down?”

  Who could forget the slaughter the papers had tagged “the Share Spree,” the “Massacre On Collins”? On the blue-blood finance street of Melbourne, just before Christmas…

  Peter suffered a brief shiver. Violence troubled him, and even now, four months after the man—what was his name?—ran amok, Peter remembered that day. He had exited 120 Collins, the tower in which Harvey Jopling worked, to confront police sirens and swirling chaos. The very thought of carnage in a financial institution, nine dead… as someone in the Skulk Club had said, this was only meant to happen in America.

  Hector scooped up Peter’s empty cup. “If you knew Jim, you’d understand why he’s persevered. Anyway—”

  “Hacking?” Despite all logic, a cog engaged in Peter’s head.

  “Just let me finish, m’boy. Apparently there’s been a possible hacking incident at the firm and Jim can’t tolerate any publicity. He’s a good man, Peter.”

  Aren’t they all? Peter began to drum fingers on the polished bar, one of those habits that lately seemed to get on his girlfriend Mandy’s nerves. “Perhaps I’ll ring him.”

  “That’s the spirit.” Hector grabbed Peter’s napkin and scribbled a number from recall. “Comb your hair before you go.”

  A retort faded from Peter’s lips. Hector rushed off. Peter stood and leaned sideways to catch his reflection in a gap in the bottles blocking the bar’s mirror. Jesus, Hec was right. The lick of black hair across his forehead rose like a rooster’s comb. Disgusted, he sat down to tug the locks into a semblance of order.

  He couldn’t help recalling how deep in their sockets the eyes in the mirror had been.

  Peter gazed at the power breakfast groups around the cramped tables, the late commuters at the window benches. The cognoscenti had scoffed five years ago when the freshly retired judge bought the venerable Block Arcade and then gutted four of the ground floor cafes and shops to create his dream. But Peter had fallen in love with Draconi’s the moment he set foot in it, and now came daily, if not more often. He’d even taken a tiny office in the warren of high-ceilinged rooms upstairs. And Draconi’s was where, together with Harvey, he ran the Skulk Club.

  His steaming dish of bacon, eggs, and field mushrooms arrived. Attacking it, he mused about taking on a hacking investigation. How interesting, he thought, and what’s more, just what the doctor ordered—a corporate job with a corporate price tag.

  But wouldn’t it be an illogical act, lunacy really, to take on such unfamiliar work?

  Not that he was wholly ignorant about hackers. Two of the Skulk Club members—the Skulkers as they called themselves—worked in the computer industry, and at recent meetings Peter had been drawn into heated debates about security on the Internet, about law and order versus social control.

  Peter finished his breakfast, clenched his teeth. Hang the logic.

  He found the phone number on the egg-smeared napkin and rang Tech Power Trading. It took a mere minute for a low female voice to arrange a ten o’clock meeting with Jim Van Kressel. Only afterward did Peter realize the implication. He grimaced and phoned Mandy.

  After he begged off from their arranged lunch, Mandy’s husky voice couldn’t disguise her irritation. “
So when, Peter, when?”

  Peter envisaged her long fingers cupping her bony jaw. “Tomorrow?”

  Her voice softened. “Okay. Look after yourself.”

  On the way out, Peter ignored Hector’s raised shaggy eyebrows. His shoes clicked across the intricate mosaic tiles of Block Arcade.

  After an hour in the office, he ventured into Collins Street. Though the morning fog had lifted, the sky remained cloud-locked. On a slow tram up the hill, he worked on his pitch: Peter Gentle, hacker-investigator extraordinaire.

  They’d taught him the value of a pitch in his years at consultants Thompson White. Jesus, he thought, it’s coming up, the two-year anniversary of my sacking. Next Monday, the 17th of April in this new millennium year.

  The top end of Collins Street, presided over by the stately pillars of the Treasury Building, was as familiar to Peter as his childhood home in Box Hill. After all, he’d slaved for five years in 101 Collins, just back over Exhibition Street. Harvey and Mandy worked at 120 Collins and Peter’s apartment was mere blocks away. Once dubbed Melbourne’s “Paris end,” it now had the air of an elegant woman hovering on the edge of neglect.

  The warm sun flared through a gap in the clouds just as Peter alighted at Spring Street. He walked under the stirring leaves of the plane trees, back to the construction of metal and glass that housed Tech Power Trading. He shaded his eyes to peer at the firm’s name on a building-wide banner fluttering under the second-floor windows. 28 Collins Street had to be the ugliest building in the precinct. External air conditioners, grafted on willy-nilly, gave it the appearance of a slum apartment block. The gaudy presence of McDonald’s at street level didn’t help, nor did the contrast with its neighbors—stately stone buildings bearing names directly from the gold boom of the 1850s.

  He stood rooted. On that horrific December day, he’d seen ambulances arrive, body bags wheeled out. Up there is where it happened, Peter thought. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.

  “Wimp,” he said.

  A woman wielding a bulky mop watched him from the McDonald’s entranceway. She pointed upwards and crossed herself. He shuddered and strode into the narrow lobby.

  The newspaper accounts had made much of the fact that the TPT office had only one entrance for the entire floor, with the fire escape outside this entrance. Only the killer’s waywardness—Maguire, Len Maguire, that was his name—had prevented many more traders being trapped. On the second floor, Peter was nonplussed to find the layout unchanged, a single solid door behind a plush reception area. A smooth-skinned receptionist, still in her teens, ushered him through the door.