"Stop," said Snake. "I've got it."
"I doubt it, but go ahead."
"You gave me the clue yourself. You said that you left Mendoza and Fitch in October of 1987. That was when the market crashed, wasn't it?"
"It was."
"So that was when you stole the money, right?"
"Right." It was a grudging admission.
"And it had something to do with those old men of yours?"
"Yes."
"Jesus." A thought struck her. "Their savings, all their money… you didn't…?"
"I didn't. What do you know about the market?"
"Enough not to play it."
"The Dow Jones average?"
"It goes up, and it goes down."
"The American Stock Exchange's Major Market Index?"
"My eyes are glazing."
"I'll try to keep it simple. The Major Market Index, the MMI, is an index of twenty stocks offered for futures contracts by the Chicago Board of Trade. It works like this. Say, back in September of 1987, a customer of mine sold fifty put options of what they call the 'November 450' contracts. This means that on the third Friday of November, whoever bought those options is entitled to be paid one hundred times any shortfall of the MMI below the 450 level. But if the MMI doesn't go below 450 by that Friday, the buyer loses and my guy wins, he gets to keep what the buyer paid him. Say he sold fifty contracts at ten, then he gets to keep the 50,000. On the other hand, if the index does fall below 450, my guy takes a beating. How much of a beating depends on how low the index falls. Got it?"
"No. You said simple. That isn't simple."
Look, it's like off-track betting, but the payoff can be terrific. Back in October of eighty-seven, the guys in my Cuban coffeeklatsch were all into playing the MMI, and they were all betting that the market would keep on rising. Alberto Nuñez was a good example. Alberto was the patriarch of his family, he was in charge of investing not only his own money, but the savings of his sons and daughters, and a couple of cousins. He was doing good that year, betting on the rise, and he was the one who sold those fifty puts of "November 450." It's a simple bet. If the index stays over 450, he wins his 50K. If it drops a little below, he loses a little. But what happens if it drops a lot? What happens if it crashes? Alberto is in for one hundred times the shortfall, but Alberto doesn't think about crashes. Who wants to think about crashes?
But that's what happened. The market slipped on Friday, and crashed on Monday. Black Monday, and Alberto was in up to his neck. You wanted it simple, so I'll keep it simple. Alberto sold his puts at ten, and by noon on Monday the price of the option was thirty-five. This means that if Alberto wants to get out, if he wants to close out his position, it will cost him 175K to buy the fifty puts that will balance out his original trade. On the other hand, if he wants to tough it out, keep his position and bet that the market goes up again, he's facing a margin call of about 200K just to stay in the game. And that's payable on the spot, the next morning.
That's Alberto's position, very simple. What isn't simple is that Alberto doesn't have any 200K to ante up, and even the 175K wipes him out. Him, and the rest of his family. So Alberto is screwed, and so are all his pals in the coffeeklatsch. They've all been playing the same game, and that Monday in Miami they were all staring at disaster.
Not that they were alone. Maybe you don't know anything about the market, but you have to know what that day was like all over the country. You have to have read about it, or seen it on television. At the end of the day the Dow was down more than five hundred points; percentage wise that's twice the loss of the crash of twenty-nine. At the end of the day more than six hundred million shares had been traded, twice as much as the previous record. At the end of the day people were busted, dead, and dented. It was the kind of day that I won't try to describe except with one word: chaos. It was a kaleidoscope of chaos as we tried to trade our way out of a total collapse, and while our world was falling apart all around us, my little gang of Cuban senior citizens huddled in a corner near the coffee machine, fear frozen on their faces. Every once in a while, one of them would shuffle over to my desk to look at the Quotrón, shake his head, and walk back to the corner to huddle again with the others. They were all in the same boat, and the boat was sinking. Not one of them had the capital to meet his margin call the next morning, and not one of them had enough to cancel his position. They were finished.
My mind was racing in different directions. I was working every phone on my desk, always with a heavy hitter on the line screaming instructions. I was in constant touch with our floor traders, or as constantly as the conditions allowed. I was juggling a dozen balls in the air as I tried to protect the Delta account, and at the same time I had to keep in mind that today was the nineteenth of the month, and that tomorrow, on the twentieth, I would have to make the transfer to the Tau account in Geneva. Rain or shine, no excuses accepted, that transfer had to be made.
Alberto Nuñez came over to my desk, looked at the Quotrón, looked at me, and tried to smile. He didn't make it. He said, "Not so good, huh?"
"Not so good, Alberto. I'm sorry."
I tried to keep my feelings about these guys on a professional level. I told myself that they had had no business playing in such a risky market. I reminded myself of all the times I had tried to warn them off. I told myself that there are always losers as well as winners, but none of that helped. This wasn't just about money, this was also about pride and humiliation. These men were the patriarchs of their families, their families had trusted them, and now that trust was broken. These weren't the fat cats, these weren't the parasites that Fidel cursed in his speeches, the bloodsuckers who had looted Cuba, and then had fled to Miami. These were Cubans who could have been my uncles, and as each hour went by they began to look, collectively, more and more like my father at the end of a long day of cutting cane. Weary, hopeless, defeated.
And meanwhile there was the Tau account to prepare for tomorrow, eleven percent of the Delta take for the month, close to one million five to be deposited into the retirement fund of Patrício Chavez. Chavez, the man who couldn't be touched.
A million five. Just about enough to close out the positions of Alberto Nuñez, and the others.
I don't know when I decided to do it. I didn't make a conscious decision. One moment I was sitting there staring at those huddled sheep in the corner, and the next moment I was on the phone with my trader placing orders.
Alberto Nuñez, buy fifty MMI at thirty-five.
Juan Balat, buy thirty MMI at thirty-five.
Ignacio Brú, buy eighty MMI at thirty-six.
Teífilo Céspedes, buy…
I went down the list, all twelve of them, and in each case I bought what they had sold, enough to close out each position. And after each guy I executed an order to pay for the transaction. An order on the Delta account. The total was just under one million five. There was nothing left for the Tau account, but my uncles were out of it clean.
And I was out of it, too. I knew it in that moment. I knew that I was finished with the DGI, with Patrício Chavez, with Mendoza and Fitch, and with gathering gossip for Fidel. I was finished with all the high-class snooping. That's all that it was. I was finished with everything I had been trained to do, right up to that moment. I was out of it.
I gathered up my transaction slips, and went to the cashier's cage. There were half a dozen brokers in line, and they all looked shocked and shaky. They were drawing out cash, large chunks of it. There was no need for that, but they all wanted cash. That's the way it was that day. The one in front of me turned around and offered to sell me his BMW. He had had it for less than a month.