When I got back I figured I should check in on Morehouse. I’d be doing a presentation at the retreat, and he might want to see it first. Besides, it made me feel important to stroll into his office unannounced. The cubicle people wouldn’t dare do such a thing.

  Morehouse’s dashing young black assistant, Brad, was at his desk, struggling to sync Morehouse’s palm data with a new cell phone.

  “Is Tobias in there?” I asked, loud enough for everyone to hear me using their founder’s first name.

  “I think he’s free,” Brad said, the word think being his only qualifier. No one knew quite what to make of me yet: the kid who treated Morehouse like a colleague instead of a superior. The stakes felt low enough to pal around with Tobias the way a Who Wants to Be a Millionaire 56 contestant does with Regis on those first few rounds, before there’s thousands to lose and the life lines are spent. And I think Tobias appreciated whatever candor I could muster. It’s what he was paying me for.

  I found him in his office reading the Post. On the cover was the latest in the saga about that runaway bull. It had apparently trampled a little girl—who was still in critical condition—and the animal was scheduled to be sacrificed tomorrow. Maybe that’s what accounted for my hallucination in the street. I must have seen the picture out of the corner of my eye.

  “I guess you saw this,” Morehouse said, dolefully.

  Did Tobias identify with that poor, imprisoned bull? A mighty beast, out of his natural environment, about to be executed?

  “Yeah,” I answered. “They’re gonna kill it.”

  “He can really be a self-righteous bastard, sometimes.”

  “Who?”

  “Birnbaum,” Tobias answered, turning the paper around for me to see. “Who do you think?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I recovered. “Birnbaum.” He had been referring to a different story entirely. Rather than simply admit I had no idea what Tobias was talking about, I tried to scan the article on the spot. It had something to do with Ezra Birnbaum, Chairman of the SEC, launching an investigation into online trading. The Fed’s Consumer Protection Bureau. Fraud. Risk. Penalties.

  “This doesn’t really affect us, though, does it?”

  “Of course it does.”

  “But we’re not involved in any fraud,” I said. “This will just weed out the illegal day trading scams.” Over the past few months, many amateur online traders had been taken in by shady schemes. 60 Minutes 57 had done a report.

  “We depend on online trading for seventy percent of our commission revenues. Retail clients—not our investors. We don’t care why they trade or how much they make, as long as they keep trading. Inquiries like this—Senate hearings, SEC investigations—they all change the public sentiment. They reduce the number of transactions.”

  “I never really looked at it that way.”

  “Well you better start,” Tobias said, grabbing the paper back. “Ezra will be there this weekend, and we’re going to have to work on him.” He could see I was still green when it came to the laws and psychology that governed trading. “Shit. Go talk to Alec. We all have to be on the same page with this one.”

  This was it. A crisis at the very heart of free enterprise. And my knowledge of computer networking gave me exposure to the kinds of decision-making power that maybe only a few dozen people had around the world. I felt like a White House staffer in the war room. What I did and said now could end up affecting headlines in the New York Times.

  Yet I had no idea what was really going on. Maybe Alec could get me up to speed before anyone found out.

  “You don’t think our market makers ever bid down the price of a stock just to take the stops out?” Alec asked from behind his desk—a slab of thick plate glass on chrome sawhorses.

  “Look, Alec,” I began, hoping for a sympathetic reception. “Trading isn’t my thing. I can help with information architecture, networking strategy, e-commerce, content ideas, interface design . . .”

  “But this is interface, Jamie,” Alec said, turning his monitor for me to see and typing a Web address into his keyboard. “Take a look here on the message boards.”

  On the screen appeared a long list of postings about a tiny NASDAQ stock called XTXT. Alec clicked one of them open, written by a user calling himself DayTradingFool.

  “Look here,” he said. “DayTradingFool says he’s just sold short on XTXT.”

  DAYTRADINGFOOL(12:31PM)

  Subject: Selling Short

  I just got off a conference call with management, and these guys are screwed. The xtxt line of servers is meeting fierce competition from IBM and the other big players. They don’t have the contracts or revenue to support their valuation. At $1.30 per share, I calculate their real P/E at over 3000! All I can say is TIMBER!!!!

  “So?” I asked. “The guy is selling short. Big deal.”

  “Yeah,” Alec said, turning another monitor around for me to see. “But look at the trades that followed immediately after his posting.”

  The screen showed a list of transactions—white numbers in columns on a blue background. Each one had a little red or green arrow next to it.

  “The arrows indicate whether it went at the bid or ask,” Alec explained.

  At precisely 12:32, all the arrows changed to red. A hundred shares at $1.28, another hundred at $1.27, four hundred at $1.27 and an eighth, all the way down to fifty shares at $1.21 by 1:00 P.M. that afternoon.

  “So? People sell on bad news.”

  “Let’s go back to the videotape,” Alec said in the voice of a sportscaster. “Take a look at the next series of posts.”

  XTXT MAN (12:40PM)

  Subject: Timber My Ass

  I don’t know who you were talking to, FOOL, but as far as I’m concerned, XTXT has positioned itself into a unique category. Their servers do Digital Transfer Tracking, using a proprietary technology. No other company is even working on that. And the 30-day moving average on this stock, combined with analysis of the Brodinger Bands, indicate that the stock is about to pop. You sell short all you want. Can’t wait until you have to cover.

  DAYTRADINGFOOL(12:55PM)

  Subject: Digital Transfer Tracking

  Since when did you become an expert on XTXT? I haven’t seen you on these boards before. How much of this issue do you currently hold? DTT technology is just another acronym for Daytraders Talking Tripe. Why don’t you come clean?

  XTXT MAN (1:08PM)

  Subject: re: Digital Transfer Tracking

  I’m a technical analyst with over 1.2 million in small cap investments. If you check the boards on Lucent and PRPS, you’ll see how accurate I’ve been over the past 18 months. I’ve been following XTXT since its IPO last April, and the recent downturn looks to me like market makers shaking out the stops before a run-up. My question to you DAYTRADINGFOOL, is how did you get a conference call with management? Insider information is illegal.

  DAYTRADINGFOOL(1:15PM)

  Subject: Libel

  I’ve forwarded your last posting to my attorneys. You should be hearing from them by the end of the week. These are public bulletin boards, and you are responsible for everything you write. If anyone else on this board is following the thread, take note of how when XTXT runs out of anything substantive to say, he immediately stoops to the kind of mud-slinging reserved for politicians. He’s run out of reasonable arguments. Sell while you still can. I’m out of here.

  PAMELA THE PICKER (1:21PM)

  Subject: Outing the Daytraders

  Thanks Fool, for sticking with this thread in spite of the insults. I, for one, appreciate your insights. I sold my stake half an hour ago, at a buck and a quarter.

  XTXT MAN (1:30PM)

  Subject: Attorneys

  I’ll be ready for their call. ;) And I’m very impressed by how charitable you are with the other members of this board. You’re a regular Mother Teresa. By the way, I e-mailed the VP of investor relations, and he assured me that no such conference call occurred this morning. In fact, the entire management team is at a convention in Las Vegas, doing a demo at the NPP trade show. They’ve been there all day. Check out the press release at http://www.xtxt.com/release122A.html.

  GOLDDIGGER (1:41PM)

  Subject: NPP trade show

  What gives Fool? Explain for us how you got to management. I just read the release. XT Man looks legit.

  XTXT MAN (1:50PM)

  Subject: Outing

  So who has outed whom, eh Daytrading Fool? I’ve forwarded this thread to XTXT management. You should be hearing from them by the end of the week. ;)

  “See,” Alec said, pointing to the other monitor. “The selling stopped around then. Up to that point, over a hundred thousand shares in all sold at the bid.”

  “I see the trades, Alec, but I don’t get what’s the big deal. People read these boards and make their decisions. It’s their own problem who they trust.”

  “We’re not there yet, Jamie.” He scrolled down the messages. “DayTradingFool is completely silent until the next morning. And look what he ends up posting.”

  DAYTRADINGFOOL (11:45AM)

  Subject: Good-bye

  I have been posting messages to this board over the past six months with the pseudonyms of DaytradingFool, Mark24, and Yinvest. In an agreement with XTXT management, I am posting now to disclose the fact that I never engaged in the conference call I claimed to have engaged in yesterday. I have no knowledge of the company’s competitive status or their XT servers. I am sorry for any inconvenience my postings may have caused, and I will no longer be participating on these bulletin boards. Good trading to all, and good day.

  “You mean he was faking it all along?”

  “It gets better,” Alec said. “Look at how the price skyrocketed immediately after DayTradingFool’s confession.”

  He scrolled down a long string of transactions, all with green arrows next to them. By three P.M., the stock had reached $2.10 per share.

  “Amazing,” I said. “One online conversation can do all that?”

  “Indeed it can.” He paused for effect. “Which is why he staged it.”

  “Who, DayTradingFool? Isn’t he in trouble now? Or was it the XT Man?”

  “It wasn’t DayTradingFool or XTXT Man,” Alec smiled.

  “What do you mean?”

  “They’re the same person, Jamie.”

  “What the fuck?”

  “It was the same day trader,” Alec explained, “having a pretend argument with himself.”

  “No way.”

  “Yes way.” Alec smiled. “He played both the bear and the bull. He let the bear win for a while so he could buy in. He picked up eighty thousand shares while DayTradingFool drove the price down. Once he had bought all he wanted, he let XTXT put a damper on the dive by challenging whether or not the conference call took place. Then, when he was ready to sell the next day—”

  “He posted DayTradingFool’s confession!”

  “Exactly!” Alec slapped the top of the monitor. “And he did it simultaneously with two other aliases who were posting to different boards. He spent months developing the characters, then killed them in a single sweep. He made over three hundred thousand dollars in the process.”

  “I can’t believe it. How do you know this for sure?”

  “The guy is a client. He lives out in Hoboken and trades all day. We make the market in that stock.”

  “Jesus Christ, Alec, isn’t that illegal?”

  “Not yet, it isn’t. I mean, what he did is illegal, but we’re just conducting his trades. How were we supposed to know?”

  “But we did know. You know.”

  “We know, but we don’t know. We certainly have plausible deniability. We can’t be expected to monitor every thread. There’s hundreds of them.”

  “You play the game, you take your chances?”

  “Welcome to the wonderful world of e-trading.”

  “But your name, your company name is on the bulletin boards.” I had returned to referring to M&L as “you.”

  “We put up disclaimers. ‘M&L is not responsible for the information posted.’ ”

  “That’s kind of you.”

  “Consider the alternative, Jamie. If Birnbaum gets his way, the firm will be held accountable for every posting. He’d institute processes and double-checks that would cost us more than our commissions.”

  “But it couldn’t be a good long-term strategy like your dad wants. Not if the majority of your traders are losing money.”

  “They’re not our real clients. These are idiot day traders. And they’re transacting more than ever. These kinds of episodes just make the housewives reading them feel like they’re in the thick of it. Like they’re part of the game. They love it, so it must be worth money to them. Some people pay to go the movies. These wannabes pay for the thrill of swimming with sharks. We got the idea from reading that Jupiter report on how community areas draw traffic to commerce sites. Since we put up the boards, transactions have gone up a hundred and seventy-five percent.”

  “I don’t mean to insult the family business, but there’s got to be better ways to drive transactions through your site.”

  “Fine, Jamie.” He turned the monitors back to their original positions. “You’re the Internet guru now. Go think of one.”

  “I will,” I said, accepting the challenge.

  “Well, you do that!” Alec punctuated his sentiment with an enthusiastic nod, just to make sure I knew he was amused, not offended, by my insolence. “The limo leaves in an hour. You’ve got your bags, right?”

  I nodded and took my leave.

  I can handle this, I thought as I went back to my office. It’s no different from game design. Just make online trading an entertaining experience, without resorting to the dark perversion of online community that M&L had relied on until now. No biggie. This might even be fun. And I’d actually be doing a good thing.

  Hell, the Morehouses didn’t even know the half of what was up my sleeve. I had an earth-shatteringly brilliant new technology to pitch. TeslaNet. A communications infrastructure based on the electrical charge of the earth itself. It could blow the lid off everything. And it was invented by kids from the neighborhood. That’s why I was working among the suits, I reminded myself. This is why I was pretending to be one of them. I was an agent of change—a double agent, in fact, using my position in the control room of corporate capitalism to subvert it.

  This made me feel good enough about the state of my soul to call home and speak to my mother. She had a way of detecting the health of my psyche by the sound of my voice, so I only liked to speak to her when I was feeling confident. Otherwise she’d identify the gaps in my emotional logic and pry them apart until I couldn’t live with myself any longer. Like that time I called her from Geraldo’s green room. She made me feel so conflicted about condemning the Jamaican Kings on national television that when I finally went on the air I overcompensated and proclaimed the Internet a “hacker’s playground.”

  Not that Mom supported the Kings in the least. Back then, she held them responsible for my downfall. But her persistent questions—honest, heartfelt, and nonjudgmental—worked on me like a Chinese water torture.

  “Howdy Mom!” I said cheerfully.

  There was no need for the pretense. Sophie had bad news.

  “I’m so glad you called,” she said. “We haven’t spoken since—”

  “Yeah,” I preempted her reproach. “It’s been crazy.” I used the word ‘crazy’ whenever I felt a curse word coming on. “I’m off to Montana tonight for some crazy meeting.”

  “Oh.” She paused. “I was hoping you would be here tomorrow. We’d go to services as a family. As a show of support.”

  “Why? What’s wrong?” I already knew.

  “He called the Assembly this morning.” She meant the Rabbinical Assembly. The place rabbis call to find new jobs.

  “Don’t you think it’s a little premature?”

  “Of course I do,” she said. “I think he should put up a fight.”

  “Did you tell him?” Is it just me, or do all sons serve as intermediaries between their parents?

  “He says I’m biased. I don’t see him the same as the congregation does.”

  “They think they’ll get a more experienced rabbi on what they pay? Are they crazy?”

  “I don’t know, honey. But I think he would listen to you.”

  “Me? He thinks I’m the enemy.”

  “No, he doesn’t. He’s proud of you. You should have heard him kvell over the article in the paper.”

  “You saw it?”

  “Morris did. He came to services last week, just to show it off. You should have told us.”

  “I saved a copy for you,” I lied. “It’s really straight out of the company press release, you know. I mean, it’s no big deal.”

  “Of course it’s a big deal. The whole congregation was talking about it.”

  “The same congregation that’s trying to get rid of him.”

  “Don’t you see, honey? That’s why he needs you. He’ll listen to what you say.”

  My mom was smart, if a little overanalytical. She studied psychology in college, and I understood where she was coming from. Dad was taking out his personal frustrations on his congregation. If he could make his peace with me, then maybe he’d make peace with them, too. But it was a stretch.

  “Dad is just too good for those people,” I said.

  “They need him, Yossi. We all do.”

  She meant me. I guess I hadn’t escaped her Freudian schema.

  “Look, I can’t come this weekend. I’m on my way out right now. But I’ll come next week. And Passover.”