Free The Day Trader by Stephen Frey

alley downtown,” he says to her. “You sure you want to get involved with him? You never know, he might do the same thing to you.”
    The room turns crimson as my fist splits Taylor’s upper lip and smashes his nose. But before I can hoist him up to hit him again, I’m wrestled to the floor by two huge men. All I hear are people shouting and screaming, then I’m lifted to my feet roughly, my left wrist wrenched up my back almost to my neck, sending searing pain through my shoulder. The two men hustle me past astonished patrons and into the building’s lobby, then out the front door and into the summer heat.
    “Don’t ever come back here!” one of them yells as they hurl me down on the pavement. They stand guard at the door until I’ve made it back to my feet and staggered away toward the parking garage connected to the building.
    The cashier eyes me from inside her glass-enclosed booth like I’m O.J. as I slip around the end of the flimsy yellow-and-black-striped gate. I head toward the stairs in a far corner of the building and walk to the third floor, where I parked my Toyota. As I make it up the last flight of steps and come through the door, I spot my heap at the other end of the garage.
    I’m halfway to it when I hear the screech of tires and the whine of an engine. I stop and instinctively turn toward the noise. Racing around a pillar close to where I came out of the stairway door is a sleek silver Mercedes with darkly tinted windows. As I watch in disbelief, the car fishtails around the pillar, straightens out, then swerves so it’s coming directly at me.
    The alcohol has made me light-headed and unsteady, and the parked vehicles I sprint toward don’t seem to get any closer. I hear the Mercedes’s high-performance engine growing louder as the car quickly closes the gap. There isn’t much time.
    I put my head down, sprint the last few yards, and hurl myself desperately at the first vehicle in line—a huge Suburban—sliding across its dark blue metal hood and tumbling onto the cement floor between it and the next vehicle in line, jamming one wrist as I hold out my arms and try to cushion my fall. A split second later the silver Mercedes roars past, grazing the Suburban’s front bumper.
    I hear the squeal of tires as the Mercedes makes another 180-degree turn, then disappears down into the parking garage’s next level. As the whine of the engine fades, I’m left to wonder if there are any more surprises waiting for me out there in the eerie silence—pierced only by the sound of my pounding heart and terrified breath. Left to wonder if that five-thousand-dollar emergency loan Vincent arranged for me a while ago from some “friends” has anything to do with what just happened.

 
    CHAPTER 6
    “Look at this stock price. It’s falling off a cliff and I’m getting massacred. The shorts are screwing me. This is bullshit!”
    Now I understand why people at Bedford call Max Frasier “Slammer.” He pounds his desk and curses constantly as he rides the stock market roller coaster. “You all right, Slammer?” I ask, rubbing my wrist as I stand up to stretch. It’s Monday morning, a week since I started at Bedford, but my arm is still sore from my tumble off the Suburban’s hood.
    “The shorts are baking me on this penny stock I bought Friday afternoon,” Max gripes, banging out a message on the stock’s Yahoo! chat board as he watches its price tick down another few basis points. On the chat board Max can complain to other traders out there in cyberspace about the early morning dive in the price and speculate with them about the cause of the sudden dip. “I knew I shouldn’t have held this thing over the weekend. Jesus Christ, look at this!” he shouts, pointing at the spot on his screen where the ticker blinks its bad news. He sends out another quick message. “I knew this was a mistake,” he bitches, slamming his desk hard. “Damn the shorts.”
    “By shorts, you mean the people who