Human experimentation in medicine -- Fiction; Suspense fiction
He'd been a bond trader for Goldman, and at family gatherings he'd brag
about making three hundred thou a year. But he had a high-maintenance
lifestyle involving downtown models he was constantly trying to impress
with jewelry and expensive vacations, so that wasn't enough. He decided
to freelance on the side. He set up a Web site and, with his broker's
license, opened a retail business trading naked futures contracts on
Treasuries. He managed to get some naive clients and for a while made a
profit for them. But then the market turned against him, or maybe he
lost his rabbit's foot, and he began losing a lot of other people's
money.
A couple of his clients with heavy losses felt that he'd misrepresented
the risk, and they were getting ready to sue. They also were
threatening to file a complaint with the SEC. There was a real
possibility he could be barred from the financial industry for life.
The only thing that would put the matter to rest was if he made good
some of their losses. But Grant, who lived hand to mouth no matter what
his income, didn't have any liquidity. A reserve? That's for guys who
don't have any balls.
She pieced this story together after the fact. Somehow he'd gotten to
their father, who bailed him out mainly to save the family from
disgrace. In doing so, he had mortgaged CitiSpace right up to the
breaking point.
When she finally unraveled this poignant tale, she realized her father
believed he was going to have to declare bankruptcy and close the firm,
laying everybody off and leaving Nina a pauper. He thought the only way
to save the family from ruin was to collect on his life insurance.
Unfortunately, however, he botched the plan. Nobody believed his death
was accidental and suicide voided the 3-million-dollar policy....
Grant had always inhabited another planet from her dad but surely these
days he was able to support any lifestyle he chose. For the last two
years he'd been some kind of hotshot financial manager for the high-
stakes conglomerate owned by Winston Bartlett, or so Nina said. He
should be making big bucks. Had he managed to screw that up somehow?
Anytime he came crawling back to the family for anything, it was
because he was in some kind of trouble.
She hadn't seen him in so long she wondered if she'd even recognize
him--not that she had any plans to see him.
But what could Grant possibly want from her now? Also, why would he
pick this morning, this anniversary morning, to reappear? Didn't he
know what day this was? Or maybe he didn't actually care.
He'd been living on the East Side that fateful morning of their dad Is
death, in a doorman co-op he surely couldn't afford, and she'd taken a
cab there to tell him in person rather than do it over the phone. When
she did, her voice breaking, she could see his eyes already filtering
out any part of it that touched him. By today he'd probably purged it
out of his memory entirely....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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