Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The Tingle
The Tingle
The Tingle
The Tingle
Ilan herman
530-677-8878
The Tingle
I drooled when Amazon dove to 34 bucks a share. I knew it wouldn’t go any lower. A
minute later, I bought a million bucks worth of shares. That was in ‘08. Now it’s ‘09 and
Amazon is up to 85 bucks a share. I cashed in, not because I’m partial to Amazon, God
bless their cyber conglomerate, but enough is enough. My million got me 2.5 million, and
Betting on the stock market isn’t about money, at least for me, not that I’m
braggin’. I rode the financial tsunami and came to rest on the peaceful Pacific jewel of
Nosara, Costa Rica, a sandy shore where sea turtles come to nest. I built my house here,
and this is where I hope to die when my time comes, hopefully decades away.
You may ask why I’m privileged to such a luscious lifestyle. I never planned to be
rich. Back in ‘86, I inherited 5000 bucks, according to my beloved uncle’s last will and
testament. The money was tied up in stocks, mainly in an obscure company called
Microsoft that went public the same year for 21 bucks a share. The lawyer said I should
keep my money there ‘cause the market was moving up. I had no idea what he meant, but
he sounded okay, so I didn’t cash in and kept my job as a substitute teacher. I saved my
pennies and took a cool summer trip to Mexico. I came back to a quarterly report stating
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that my 5k had grown to 50k. I called the lawyer to check where the accounting error had
taken place.
“No error,” he said with glee. “I’m gonna leverage ten million and you’re gettin’
in on the action.”
“You can’t; I’m a lawyer, but I ain’t gonna steal your money.”
“I can live with that,” I said and hung up. The guy was possibly foolish but I
Six months later the lawyer called and snickered. “We made two million.”
Once the $$ were there, buying stocks became a game. I’m not trained in financial
ways, but I made more money, lots more. I staggered through cocaine, rolled down an
alcoholic slope, found sanctuary between women’s thighs, and when Bill Gates, the
master of my fortune, went philanthropic, I did too, and gave away most my profits to
worthwhile third-world projects. If you have a few extra shekels, I recommend you give
them to the poor, but I won’t preach. I decided to never have more than a million in the
bank. Go ahead, flail at my bourgeoisie conduct, but last year I made about 12 million,
and donated 11 million. Put that in your pipe and smoke it before you call me a selfish
bastard. I have yet to figure out why I was privileged to ride the Microsoft wave. Call it
I lived a comfortable and humble life in Nosara. The local community loved me. I
helped pay the town’s bills, and had nothing left to wish for. I don’t mean that to sound
sad. Having nothing to wish for is good; leaves time to appreciate the is.
Two days after I cashed in my Amazon stock, I was walking to the beach to watch
the sunset when a white van pulled up beside me. Two masked men pulled me into the
back seat and placed a hood over my head. “You speak you die,” said a deep voice. I
stayed still and quiet, each trembling breath a gift from eternity. Soon after, the van
chugged to a halt. Still wearing the hood, and short of breath, I was shoved into a room
and pushed into a chair. The hood was snatched off my head and with it a clump of my
thinning hair. My heart beat like a sledgehammer. A muscular square-jawed man with a
crew cut and the frosty-blue eyes of a killer stood over me and said, “How do you
know?” A scar ran down his right cheek, from under his eye to the bottom of his chin.
“Know what?” I asked. I was so scared I would’ve gladly licked his toes if he
“I’m not sure I understand what you mean.” My voice shook with mortal fear.
“I’m not fucking with you,” I yelled, about ready to lose bladder control.
Red-faced with embarrassment, I watched the warm urine trickle down my legs
The scarred man stepped back and laughed. “Mama’s boy,” he said, then slapped
The man crossed his thick arms over his chest. “How do you know where the
money goes?”
Suddenly I knew what he was after. “You want to know how I make money in the
stock market?”
My interrogator rolled his icy-blue eyes and huffed, “Finally comin’ around,
dickbrain.”
My heart settled a bit, I sat up in the chair. “No need for cussing and hitting.
The cruel man leaned into me. From close up, the whites of his eyes were tinted
murky yellow and pink. “Torture works,” he whispered. “Want me to pull out one of your
He sat in the metal chair across from me and said, “You never made a bad trade.
How come?”
I shrugged. “What’s the big deal? There’s lots of traders like me out there.”
“No one has your track record.” The man sounded almost cordial.
The scarred man reached for the folder on the table and opened it. He scanned the
pages for a moment and said, “Your ratio of profit to investment is the best on Wall
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Street. No one knows better than you when to buy and when to sell.” He slammed shut
My inquisitor smiled a missing front tooth. “You get a tingle in the back of your
neck.”
“I know you’re tellin’ the truth,” he said. “I’m not as dumb as you look.”
I chuckled. “That’s a Laurel and Hardy line,” and, finally at ease, I asked, “Who
are you?”
The scarred man stood up and paced the room. “You want funny? Watch Seinfeld.
Here’s the deal. You keep doing what you do and give us eighty percent or we snuff you.
Casinos in Vegas don’t care for card counters and we don’t like it when someone makes
“You’ll never know and don’t try to find out unless you have a death wish.”
I was getting tired of his bullshit. You don’t threaten to kill the goose laying the
golden eggs. “If I give you eighty percent, I’ll barely have enough to help the less
The scarred man had a high-pitched hyena-like laugh. “You’re bargaining with
us? We don’t bargain, dickface. From now on, consider yourself the less fortunate one. Or
maybe you should feel fortunate ‘cause you get to live. You have three minutes to give
me an answer.”
He walked out. I got up and walked around the room. My wet pants, stuck to my
thighs, smelled sour. I was never a fighter, even in elementary school when I was
challenged by a boy shorter and skinnier than me. Maybe I’m a coward or maybe I just
know better: anyone who uses violence is an emotional Neanderthal. Therefore, when my
interrogator walked back in the room, I shrugged and said, “Okay.” What else could I do?
Fight some humongous and shady corporate entity with zero regard for human life? I
loved my life in Nosara. Let’em blackmail me. I’d still make two million a year and put it
to good use.
I was blindfolded and guided to the van that dropped me off a short walk from my
house and then sped away into the twilight. I was gone about two hours. How quickly life
Trying to calm my frayed nerves, I uncorked a bottle of wine and walked to the
beach. I sat in a cove overlooking the Pacific, sipped the wine, and listened to the waves
erupt through the cavernous rocks and spew rainbows of droplets like a locomotive
farting steam.
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I slept badly, awakening breathless from a nightmare where I’m tortured by the
scarred man who snickers while he wraps my face in a wet towel and holds his wide
The next day I sat listlessly at my computer. Financial data streamed before my
tired eyes. I waited to feel the tingle in the back of my neck but nothing happened.
Five hours later I shut down the computer and took a long nap. I woke up at
midnight and followed Asian and European stocks. The markets were flat but that hadn’t
bothered me in the past, when I could sense a stock hitting bottom. I sat at my computer
until five in the morning and pounded shots of whiskey. Getting drunk had sometimes
proved useful when I needed to sense the subliminal trend that sent the tingle rushing
Fatigue soaked my bones as the roosters crowed dawn. I hadn’t made a single
transaction. Fear shook my heart. The tingle that had led me to lovely Nosara in the
Two weeks passed. Knowing I’d been crippled doubled my fear of the muscular
man with the crew cut and further exasperated my loss of sleep.
“The fear of the fear,” my therapist said, when I’d shared my phobia of getting
I invested a few times and lost heavily. It was a matter of time before I’d have to face the
scarred man and his insane eyes. I was condemned, awaiting execution.
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A few days later, on a late afternoon, a black Jeep drove up to my house. From my
office window I saw my nemesis step out of the vehicle. I waited for him in the doorway.
His pursed lips said he was pissed. The scar on his cheek glowed pink. Once in the living
room, he grabbed me by the throat and slammed my back against the wall. His nose flat
against mine, dead eyes an inch away, he grinned and said, “What the fuck you doin’?”
stomach and slapped my face eight times. Blood trickled from my nose. I was ashamed of
my cowardice, how I couldn’t stand up to his sadism. I didn’t even try to defend myself.
He got off my stomach, cracked his thick knuckles and said, “Wassup Mama’s
boy? The powers that be are gettin’ restless. They don’t like to be played the fool,
I sat up on the couch and wiped my bloodied nose. “I’m trying,” I said breathless.
“I don’t know what’s up. I can’t feel the tingle. Too much pressure.”
My interrogator curled his fists. “You better feel the fuckin’ tingle soon or I’ll
show you what pressure’s all about. I’ll make you hurt till you won’t feel nothin’ at all.
I’m comin back in two weeks. You have your shit together, you live; you don’t, and I’m
pullin’ out your nails, fingers and toes.” He spoke casually and I believed every word he
said. He started to walk out but then turned to me and said, “And don’t try to run. I got
I watched the black Jeep drive away. I put an icepack on my nose and lay on the
couch. I was scared but also really pissed. I don’t like being called a wimp. The man was
an arrogant brute. Arrogant brutes make mistakes. The time had come for me to do what I
When he showed up at my house two weeks later, I stood stoop shouldered at the
entrance. As he walked up the path, I shielded my face and cried, “Don’t hit me.”
A satisfied smirk rose to his thin lips. He was now three feet away from me.
I pulled out the handgun with the silencer from my back pocket and said, “I need to
rearrange your scar,” and shot him in the face three times. He was dead before he hit the
Pedro and Emanuel, my burly fishermen friends, ran out from the trees. They
wrapped the body in a blanket and carried it to their boat. The boat sailed to deep waters,
where Pedro and Emanuel quartered the body and fed it to the sharks. When they got
back, I gave them each 100 grand—enough for them to feed their families for a
generation. They wept with gratitude. Then we shook hands, as men do, and they drove
off in the Jeep, which they dismantled later that night and sank in the ocean two miles
offshore.
I ran to the dirt airstrip a mile away, where a two-seat Cessna revved its propeller
engine. We flew off into the night. We landed in Panama City two hours later, where I
paid the Australian pilot 50 grand. A black SUV drove me from the airport to the cargo
ship where the Russian captain shook my hand, accepted an envelope with 300 grand,
and then raised anchor and sailed full throttle into the choppy Pacific. A float plane
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picked up me up a week later, while the ship anchored in the Arabian Sea ten miles off
the shore of Pakistan. Navigated by a rotund Chinaman who was paid 75 grand, the plane
flew close to the ground and landed in the Central Pakistani city of Khost. From there
Pakistan, where I was met by three masked men and four mules. In night’s darkest hours
A week later we arrived at a tiny village where a stocky and mustached man with
fierce brown eyes hugged me and kissed my cheeks three times. “We have heard a lot
about you and look forward to working with you,” he said in a throaty accent.
“Likewise,” I said, tired but relieved. I’d arrived at the one place on earth where
no corporation or swat team could find me—the mountain peaks on the border of
Dell SPX and a 25-inch flat screen. I sat at the computer, cracked my knuckles, and then
browsed the world markets while Ahmed potted tea, which he served with goat cheese
and honey cakes. I was sipping tea and scrolling, when I saw that Halliburton stock,
which I’d bought for 10 bucks a share on the eve of the Iraq war, and which had risen
ten-fold, was starting to slip. The tingle at the back of my neck had me quickly cashing
out. I laughed. The tingle was back, stronger than ever, like a dear friend who’d vanished
in the wilderness and was feared dead, only to emerge from the jungle riding an elephant
“Halliburton’s paying your twenty percent,” I told Ahmed, who smiled and said,