Manufactured Luck

Duane Semple was medium height, thin, serviceably clothed, dark-haired and –eyed, triangular-faced, competent, hard-working, passed over. The same age as Earl Cappel, he had been passed over twice for the junior partnership that should have been his. Initially awkward at making friends, he had given up a long time ago. As he aged, his face had assumed a natural scowl and his eyes had naturally narrowed. He knew his stuff, but his social awkwardness has assured that he would be manoeuvred into being the firm’s dogsbody. What that fate had done to his face, gait and posture made his easier to laugh at behind his back.

He had no friends in the office, and no friends at all until Earl Cappel had bumped into him. Cappel had been there to ask on the finer points of a merger deal that had been announced, back when the broker was still a desk jockey in the main room of his branch. Earl, sized up as another figure of fun, had been steered to Duane; both had hit it off. He had been patient with the corporate lawyer’s social awkwardness, and it had paid off. He not only got the information he needed, but he also got an insight into what Duane did for Moyer, Reen and Abert. He also learned that Duane’s employer was the firm of choice for takeovers in the gold field.

Still friends, they had added to their buddyhood by entering into a side arrangement. Having no girlfriend, and no taste for luxuries, Duane saved a lot of his salary – but he wanted more. Like other salaried men with no real stake in the world, he had comforted himself with the thought that an eventual seven-figure net worth would show them all. He didn’t mind getting there more quickly than he should. His less-than-boony colleagues had added to a disaffection that had hardened into a shell.

Reading and then deleting his good friend’s text message, he replied that he’d send the particular the usual way. Nothing yet. Yes, he would text Larry too.

*

Sergeant Hollingshead of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Commercial Crime Section (Securities Fraud) retained his original placidity. He didn’t care that he was in the amply-decorated boardroom with the senior vice-president in charge of compliance, senior vice-president in charge of retail sales, executive vice-president in charge of corporate finance, and the CEO of Upper Canada Quigley, Lambert. They might as well have been brokers to him.

“So you’re sure that Cappel didn’t try to break any firewall in the firm,” he concluded to the executive vice-president.

“No; he kept away. Everyone knows he wants to skip off and start his own shop; had you not shown up, we still would have been glad to see him go.”

“Too lucky,” the CEO amplified. “Even if he has been legal, guys like that burn out and take a lot of clients with them. We don’t need that here.”

“No E-mails, either.” Cappel’s texter had a special encryptation program added, one with no back door. The trouble was, the RCMP’s interceptor could detect no pattern of activity timed to Cappel’s phone calls to spread the good news. On the last insider trade, he hadn’t used his special texter at all before spreading the word around…and taking a chunk of the target company himself.

“Actually,” the senior vice-president of compliance informed him, “there were two E-mails timed with his first two lucky strikes” she finished with irony. “No more. The timing fits, but they were ravings.

“He said it had been an old high-school classmate of his, who suffers from schizophrenia. The branch manager told him to use his personal mail, and left it at that. Records show he did check his personal E-mail right before working the phones.”

*

Constable Evelyn Grau was on a similar mission, to visit with the managing partner of Moyer, Reen and Abert. Their firm being the one leaked from, they had a pressing interest in closing the case. As soon as texted, she had sent the request to impound Cappel’s private E-mails along with the two sent to his firm address. She gave the obviously schizophrenic maunderings to the decrypt team, who came up dry. “It’s a Linear A matter, Sergeant. The decrypters can’t get anything anywhere near consistent from it.”

She was past her youth, but only a little. So, she enjoyed decking herself up as a courier. Having submitted E-mailed questions in advance to the managing partner’s son’s E-mail address, she was there to pick up the “urgent letter” that contained the researched and written answers.

Back at her desk, she opened up the letter and read that there was no obvious culprit. The obvious suspect was Duane Semple, because of his friendship to Earl Cappel, but Duane in now way fit the standard profile of a greedy man. No cheeriness after the insider-trading scam had started. No new brokerage accounts disclosed. No evidence of any change in spending patterns; no new gadgets, suits, car or anything like it. No newfound cockiness. Duane’s immediate boss added that he was a competent lawyer but lacked flair and had below-average people skills. He seemed to resent being passed over, but no more than baseline. A simple soul at heart, he would be easy to catch in the eventuality it was him. He was the type who’d set up an account in his mother’s name; nothing more. He was not just unpersonable, he was also uncrafty. That went with the lack of flair.

An earlier check had shown no new account or suspicious activity in any of his few relatives. The prime suspect showed no hint of chicanery.

*

Hollingshead didn’t mind waiting around to see Cappel. As a “lottery winner” with connections to others, he wasn’t questioned as he waited by the closed door. It was twenty minutes before he spotted the hurried broker.

He had made sure that the captain had authorized a disbursement precisely equal to the prize he had “won,” and made doubly sure the colleagues and boss at his “job” had been thoroughly coached. Cappel had checked up on him, and the call had been transferred to his desk at the station. He himself having been coached, he let nothing slip during their conversation.

Constable Grau was waiting in the parking lot where Cappel had parked his car. Sgt. Hollingshead, although well short of enough proof that would get the Crown prosecutor satisfied, had enough for a little lean-on that would get this rabbit bolting.

“Hey, Earl! What about my account?”

Surprised, Cappel smiled. “The luck of the gods hasn’t arrived yet. Now, if you’ll –“

“Hey, hold on.” Hollingshead had fifteen centimetres on the broker, who felt it as the larger man got close to him. “I hear you have an interest in schizophrenia.”

Blinking, the shorter man replied “Yes, I do. An old classmate of mine is afflicted with it. Did you check up on me?”

So much for the lean-on, the police officer noted as he confirmed. The quick conversation ended with an assurance that Hollingshead would be the first to know when a great idea occurred to the broker.

Still waiting in the parking lot, Grau got two messages. The first, from the sergeant, said that the encounter had been a disappointment. No nerves, no urge to bolt, nothing. The second came from the compliance officer who was liaising with the two. He reported searches: “Arthur Hollingshead Lottery Winner” and “Lotto Max Second Prize Winner.” Cappel later turned to normal business use.

Both the sergeant and she had been cleared by a search that pulled up neither of them in any extraordinary capacity. A search for Arthur Hollingshead would find a lot of junk and false leads between the first result and Sergeant Hollingshead of the RCMP. Lotto Max didn’t name names of second-prize winners on any press release, and only one of the three winners had been named in the paper. One other, safely anonymous, had been in the same city they were all in.

The compliance monitor had not though to reverse-lookup one of the phone calls Cappel had made later. It had looked like one of many cold calls throughout the day. So, he didn’t bother the constable still waiting in the parking lot about it.

She continued to wait, on what was basically a hunch. Hollingshead said he would cover for her, and he ended the call with a crack about donuts. She was on her second self-debate over whether to leave when that little phone call got Cappel the answer he had been looking for. A pushover of a lottery officer had given him the three names of the Lotto Max second prize winners on the same day. None them were Hollingshead’s.

He stifled an expletive that exploded in his head, and ordered himself to wait out the day. It was now clear to him that his new “client” was a cop.