Joe Burke's Last Stand Part 4

"Winifred," she said.

"I saw you in The Elliot Bay Book Company," he said. "Last month. Moira was a guess."

"Oh, yes . . . something funny . . . you had a projection."

"Very funny," Joe said. "Winifred, my name is Joe, Joe Burke. Why not come sit? Talk story . . . "

"I've given up on men," she said to someone listening in the banyan.

"Very sensible," Joe said.

She hesitated and sat. "I love this tree," she said, placing her sun gla.s.ses on the table between them.

"Didn't someone write about it? Or under it?" he offered.

"Stevenson," she said. "Or was it Mark Twain?" Her eyes were intensely brown with radiating streaks of garnet.

"It's a literary banyan," Joe said.

"So, what brings you to Hawaii?"

"I used to live here," Joe said. "I stopped computer programming, and I stopped being married--again. It seemed natural to come back."

"Hawaii gets to you," she said. Winifred lived in Manoa. She was a photographer. Joe would have bet that she was some kind of artist; he found them wherever he went. Her sister lived on Queen Anne Hill in Seattle, close to Kate and the Caffe Ladro. Her father, Arthur Soule, was a professor, retired in Vermont.

"Lot of Soules on the Maine coast," Joe said. "And a Coffin clan. The line is: 'For every Soule, there's a Coffin."'

"So my father has told me."

"Win, Winifred . . . what do you prefer to be called?"

"Either works. 'Winny' is what horses do. My father sometimes calls me Freddy."

"How about Mo?"

"No one calls me Mo."

"Excellent! I shall be the first." She had large features, a wide serious mouth that turned slightly up or down at the corners. Down in this case. "I thought of you as Moira," Joe explained, "mysterious Celt, born for the luck of the Burkes."

"Born to be bad," she said. "You can think of me any way you like, Joe Burke. I must be going. Bye." She twirled her sun gla.s.ses, smiled once, and left. He watched to see if she would swing her a.s.s a little for his benefit, but she didn't. Her eyes stayed with him--large and sensitive, clear. She was nearly six feet tall and broad across the shoulders. Her hands were as big as his. Not the happiest of campers, he said to himself.

He went back to thinking about Victor Sperandeo's book. As a teen-ager, Trader Vic made a living playing cards in New York. Then he moved into the big casino on Wall Street. His book was straight exposition, written without pretense. Joe had read other books about the market.

There were many different approaches and specialties: day trading, intermediate and long term investing, stocks, bonds, currencies, and commodities. Sperandeo was someone he could relate to personally, a maverick.

There were other market gurus who made sense to him--John Train and Warren Buffett, especially. They espoused a long-term strategy: think before you buy, and then, once having bought, continue to buy on dips and hold unless the company changed fundamentally for the worse.

Sperandeo was more of a trader. Joe was torn between the two approaches. Discount brokerages had just become available on the Internet; one could trade without having to actually live in New York.

On line discussion groups argued about stocks 24 hours a day. He decided to buy a computer.

Three hours later Joe paid the cab fare and carried his new system up to the apartment, one box at a time. He had it working in an hour and went to bed pleased with himself.

The following day he opened an account with a service provider for Internet access. There was an e-mail message from Kate waiting at his old address in Maine. Joe had agreed to pay Kate's mechanic $30 a month to store the truck and had asked him to go over it, change the oil, and do whatever needed doing. Joe replied that the check would be in the mail and wished her a Happy New Year. The Internet is amazing, he thought. The message was in Maine; Kate was in Seattle; he was in Honolulu and could be anywhere.

"d.a.m.n, Batman, we're global!"

On impulse, he found a number listed for W. Soule and called her on the old fas.h.i.+oned telephone. After a recorded message and a beep, he said, "Mo, this is Joe Burke. I'm having adventures. Want to have lunch?" He left his number and hung up. When he returned from a walk, the red message light was blinking.

"Joe, thanks for asking, but, no . . . I'm not an adventure." She made an amused sound. "Call me again sometime when you've grown up." Click.

Joe called back immediately.

"Hi, I grew up," he said when she answered. "A woman on TV just explained it to me. You have to transcend the grieving child within."

"Hmmm," Mo said.

"Pie," Joe continued, "what's the name of that place on Hausten Street where they have great pie? The place with a fish pond. The Willows.

Back in time."

"I'm afraid you'd have to go back in time to eat there; they closed two or three years ago."

"d.a.m.n. How about Keo's? Tomorrow, 12:30 or thereabouts?" His best offer. You'd have to be seriously repulsed by someone to turn down Keo's.

"Ulua with black bean sauce--I'm going to regret this," she said.

"Great. No. I mean, we'll have a nice lunch. See you there," Joe bailed before she could change her mind.

4

Joe put down his fork. "Lemon gra.s.s," he said with satisfaction. Mo was eating rapidly; she raised her eyebrows.

"So, what have you been up to?" she asked, breaking off a piece of spring roll.

"I bought a computer."

"Ughh."

Joe laughed. "I hate them, really. But they're good tools--I bought it for the Internet, so I can trade stocks."

"I'm remembering," Mo said between bites, "what they say about how to make a small fortune on Wall Street."

"How's that?"

"Well, you start with a large one."

"Ha, ha. That's one method I can't use."

"I should have eaten breakfast," she said. "What is the d.a.m.ned Internet anyway?"