Villiers Touch by Brian Garfield Page B

fuckin’ disgrace the punks they put behind a wheel nowadays. Half these stupid fleet drivers ain’t got no idea at all how to get from one place to another. You gotta keep movin’ to make a living in this racket, mister, I can tell you—you get yourself caught in fuckin’ traffic jams, and you lose your shirt. Y’understand what I’m saying?”
    Hastings grunted. Goralski gunned and braked violently, slithering between cars, outwitting traffic. In the taxi everything seemed slightly loose—taximeter, doors, windows, ashtrays, plexiglass, horn ring, change counter—so that a constant din of rattles assaulted the ear, symphonic accompaniment to Barney Goralski’s nonstop monologue. “One time, see, I buy a hundred shares of this five-dollar stock. So right away it becomes a three-dollar stock.”
    Goralski cursed a double-parked truck, bucked loudly past it, and once more launched into his history of his battles with the stock market: “’Nother time I get this tip, so I buy a hundred shares of a six-fifty stock. I pay thirteen and a quarter commission.”
    It awed Hastings that the cab driver could remember the exact figures, let alone believe anyone could conceivably be interested.
    â€œBut then I find out the fucking stock’s selling at eighty times earnings, y’know what I mean? Eighty times earnings, Christ-sake. So I get shaky. The stock goes up half a point, and I sell out everything, both them stocks. I end up with a net loss of a hundred and thirty-seven bucks and seventy-five cents, thirty bucks of which is commissions to the crooked bastards that sold it to me in the first place.”
    â€œThen I buy a hundred shares of this Trymetronex—cost me damn near thirteen hundred, time I paid the commission. And the minute I buy, it starts to slide. I put in a bunch of sell orders a point above the market—I admit I was pushin’ for that extra point, y’understand what I’m saying? I figured, shit, it’s bound to bounce back sooner or later. So it goes down to nine. From twelve and a half down to nine mutterfuckin’ dollars. Then they pull some legal hocus-pocus, the bastard corporation calls its convertible debentures. You know what that does?”
    Hastings grunted, which was a mistake, because Goralski had to explain.
    â€œWell, they got convertible debentures worth ten million bucks, and when they recall them they issue shares of common stock to replace the debentures. Debentures—that’s bonds. Y’understand? So they shovel out ten million bucks’ worth of new stock onto the market, and naturally the price drops to seven mutterfuckin’ dollars. You can bet your sweet ass those insiders knew all about the debenture recall in advance. It’s little outside guys like me that get grabbed by the balls. Then I go back to the stupid asshole broker, and you know what he says to me? He says my stocks was overvalued when I bought them, he says. He says I shoulda known better. Jesus Christ, the mutter-fucking sonofabitch didn’t say that when I BOUGHT them! ”
    Mercifully they had arrived at 44th Street. Hastings’ ears rang. He paid Goralski, tipped him half a dollar, and got out quickly. A small old lady darted past him into the cab. He walked down 44th Street a few doors to the address the brokers had given his secretary on the phone. It was one of the medium-sized midtown hotels, not far from the Algonquin. Miss Carol McCloud—probably a white-haired old lady, like so many who lived in residential-hotel apartments, clipping her coupons and keeping miniature dogs. Miss McCloud had recently bought a large block of NCI stock. Why? Who had touted her onto it? Rumors were wildfire in the stock market, but not even little old ladies spent a quarter of a million dollars on the sole basis of rumors.
    He went into the narrow lobby and found a house phone; after four rings a low female voice