I knew Silver read the message boards, or had employees who did, and would find out about my posts. I also knew that when I started focusing on his trophy wife, he’d know it was me posting. This was my intention. I wanted him to know who his enemy was, that it was me who was out to get him. It would make my ultimate victory even more satisfying.
Some longs — including Silver himself, for all I knew — now responded to my attacks by saying that I had a hidden agenda, that I had to be an irate former employee or have some other vendetta against the company. People put me on “ignore” and tried to block my messages, but I had multiple IDs and was unstoppable. I knew that my posts were having an effect, that I was influencing the stock price. On days when I wrote my most scathing attacks, the stock almost always dropped and I profited. I felt like I could manipulate the buying and selling on a whim. It was just a matter of how often I posted and how effective my bashings were. But there was no doubt that I was in total control of the company’s fate. If I wanted to change my position and go long I could’ve driven the stock up to twenty dollars a share in one month.
My new goal was to demolish the stock with my most furious attacks yet, to go for the kill. And I got some huge help one morning when Delivero issued a major earnings warning before the market open. The same analysts who had been cheerleading the stock for years finally woke up out of their fucking cocoons and reduced their ratings to “hold” and “sell,” and the stock opened down over two points. I cashed in big time on a day trade but I didn’t put the moolah in the bank, into money heaven; instead, I shoved it into my margin account and upped my short position even more. Armageddon for Delivero was on the horizon and I stood to make millions.
I increased the frequency of my postings. Sometimes I stayed up all night to influence foreign investors, and one day I set a personal record of one thousand posts in a day. Delivero’s stock was continuing to tank, sinking to under two dollars a share, and I knew it was all because of me.
Then a registered letter arrived at my apartment. It was from Delivero’s lawyers, threatening a lawsuit if I didn’t stop bashing the company. Silver was just trying to intimidate me, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to let that happen.
A week later, as the stock price continued to drop, I tarted getting threatening e-mails. They were from anonymous addresses, but I knew Silver was sending them. All of the notes basically said the same thing — that I’d better stop bashing or else. Some got more explicit, warning me that I’d lose limbs or die in pain.
I considered calling the police, but I was afraid of what might happen if I did. There were detailed records of me bashing Silver’s stock and I began to fear that I could go to jail for libel for some of the things I’d written.
I didn’t respond to any of the notes and stopped my onslaught, hoping the thing would die down on its own. Then, one morning while I was sitting at my PC, a brick shattered my window and almost hit me in the head. I looked outside and saw a black car speeding away, but I couldn’t catch the license plate. I didn’t bother calling the cops, figuring that Silver would just deny responsibility, try to make me look like the bad guy.
Then I left my apartment that Sunday afternoon to get a haircut and returned to discover a message spray painted on my bedroom walclass="underline"
DIE MOTHERFUCKING BASHER DIE
I decided enough was enough. I was surprised that Silver had gone this far, but I remembered that he’d always had a temper, screaming at employees and firing them on a whim — hell, he’d fired me for no legitimate reason — and maybe the stress of his company going under was getting to him and he was snapping. How the hell did I know what was going on with him? All I knew was that he was starting to threaten my personal safety and I had to take some action.
Years ago, after an attempted break-in at my building, I’d bought a gun for protection. I decided I’d go talk to Silver face-to-face and try to get him to back off. If he caused trouble, started threatening me again, I’d show the gun, just to scare him and make him think I was more psycho than he was. I knew that beneath all of the tough talk, Silver was a big pussy and I could intimidate him easily.
The next day, Monday, I drove to Silver’s house in Bernardsville. They should’ve called it Snootyville. When I was working at Delivero I went to a company picnic in Silver’s backyard. It was one of the biggest, most expensive houses on a block of big, expensive houses. He probably blew three million bucks of stockholders’ money on it.
I waited in my car in a spot near his driveway. I figured he’d leave the office at around 6 or 7 and the drive from Jersey City to Bernardsville would take about an hour — an hour and a half with traffic. But at 9 o’clock there was still no sign of him. I knew he wasn’t out of town because I’d called his office earlier from a pay phone and his security said he was busy in a meeting. He was probably out with a client, making one of his bullshit deals.
Sure enough, at a little after 10 o’clock, his red Porsche pulled into the drive. The garage door opened and the car went in. I got out of my car and walked fast toward the garage. Silver got out of the Porsche. He looked like crap, like he’d aged ten years, but he still had that pompous, my-shit-doesn’t-stink quality he’d had when he fired me, and I remembered how gleeful he’d seemed that day, as if showing me the door was giving him a big fat boner.
When Silver saw me I knew he recognized me, even though he pretended not to. I told him I knew what he was doing, trying to terrorize me, and it wouldn’t work. Then he squinted, acting like it was all starting to click for him, and then he fake smiled, pretending he wasn’t scared shitless, but it was obvious he was. It was great watching him squirm.
He claimed he had no idea what I wanted from him and said a lot of other shit, trying to calm me down so he could have a chance to escape into the house and call the cops. I told him I wasn’t playing games and I took out the Glock. I have no idea why he grabbed at the gun, what he was trying to do. Maybe he didn’t know what he was trying to do either; maybe he just panicked. Who the fuck knows? We struggled for a few seconds, at least it seemed like seconds. Inches away from the man whose company I’d been bashing for years, I hated him right then the same way I had when he called me into his office and told me I was being let go. Let go, like I was a fucking fish he was tossing back to sea. I remembered how I could’ve killed him that day, and how I’d always wished I had, and then the gun went off. He fell onto the concrete next to the Porsche, blood spilling out of his chest.
I ran like hell. When I got into my car, I heard a woman screaming — maybe his slut wife — but I was pretty sure I got away before she saw me or the car.
The drive back to Hoboken was a blur. I still don’t know how I made it without getting pulled over, because I must’ve been speeding my ass off.
The rest of the night I was in a state of total panic. Even if no one could identify me, I knew I was going to be an obvious suspect. I’d been bashing Silver for years and all of my posts were online for the world to see. Toward dawn, I started packing. My only chance was to leave the country.