“Yeah.”
“Well, that’s what you get for your three hundred. Only … you shave it.”
“I’ll want some pictures,” he said.
“Well … of it. Shaved. Not me, just it. Up to my belly button, no farther. I’ll spread for you, too. But it’s got to be Polaroids, and I’ve got to see them. A girl who’s a concert artist can’t have pictures of her around—You know. Pictures of my pussy, okay. But not my face included.”
VI
Cole and Emily, Tony and Margot, sat over dinner once again, this time in a Czech restaurant that was an adventure for all of them. The wine was the darkest red any of them had ever seen. Cole guessed the name was the Czech word for blood.
“You were half right,” Tony said to Cole. “His B&G stock was a bust. I put in ten thousand and got out at fifteen hundred. The damned company never had enough capital to do what it was supposed to do.”
“I was afraid of that,” said Cole.
“So what happened?” Tony went on. “Dave came to me and said he had a deal that would recover my loss and more, easy. I said thanks but no thanks. At that point he reached in his pocket and handed me his personal check for eighty-five hundred.”
“It cleared?” Emily asked, sardonically.
Tony nodded. “It cleared. And I’ll tell you something else. If I’d bought into the deal he offered me—for, say, another ten thousand—I‘d have come out of it more than okay. The son of a bitch said he had to protect his reputation. I imagine he bought out a number of investors. Then he turned around and made a huge profit on another deal.”
Cole shook his head. “Using insider information, I’m afraid.”
“Could be. The guy’s a hustler. He always was, but he’s got his own code of ethics. He’s going to wind up buying and selling all of us out of pocket change.” Cole interrupted. “Or he’s going to wind up in a federal reformatory.”
“He’ll find somebody to take the fall for him,” Emily said bitterly.
“He’s vulnerable somewhere,” said Margot with bland knowledgeability. “That’s the way it is. I know. That’s the world. Nobody’s Teflon.”
VII
Dave went to Greta’s concert at SUNY Purchase, the Westchester County branch of the State University of New York. She played in a pops concert. He was unable to appreciate her virtuosity. His attention was focused on her dress, for which he had paid six hundred dollars. Also on the diamond pendant hanging in her shallow décolletage, for which he had paid twice as much.
She played a concert piece he should have known but did not: Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, which required power on the piano that he could not appreciate.
The Times reviewed her concert in the morning:
The young pianist Greta Sorensen, winner of the Arthur Rubenstein International Master Competition and other competitions, appeared last night on the concert stage at SUNY Purchase and established a legitimate claim to be a major concert artist for the next decades. Undertaking a work that has been performed by such virtuosos as Gershwin himself and Oscar Levant, she demonstrated the power and virtuosity of a commanding new talent. Even when the visiting orchestra, from Indianapolis, was off its timing, which unfortunately it sometimes was, she hit her notes hard and forced the orchestra to follow her.
“That’s marvelous!” Dave said to her the next evening.
“Lot of hard work,” she said. “For many years. I used to get up at six in the morning so I could practice two hours before I went to school. Lifelong habit. I get up and start my day’s practice at six. That’s what it takes.”
Dave grinned. “Well … how about getting some of those extra clothes off?”
“That’s all you care about, really,” she said. “That’s really all you care about: staring at my bod. Well … when do I get to stare at you? How about this time you strip down? This time we’ll eat dinner with you naked and me not.”
“Greta!”
“I mean it, lover. I want to see that cock and those balls swinging between your legs. C’mon! You want any tonight—”
He did it. He stripped.
“Okay. Parade around the room the way you make me do. Flip your hips and make that equipment bounce around the way you like to see my tits do.”
“Greta …”
“Hey! You’re on your way. You’re gonna make twenty fortunes. Well, I’m gonna cash in on my hard work. You’re good at what you do. I’m good at what I do. I’m as good as you, baby. C’mon. I’ll get that cock hard ’cause it’s beautiful.”
FIVE
I
1983
“This is not wise,” his mother said to Dave. “You are spending far too much money. What are you now, Rockerfellow?”
“How can you say I am spending too much when you don’t know how much I have?”
“Anybody who pays two hundred fifty thousand for a house is paying like Rockerfellow.”
They sat in the kitchen of the house where Dave grew up, over beers and a package of chips. His mother, who had always worn housedresses, had made a concession to the decade: She was wearing a white T-shirt and blue jeans. It was incongruous, somehow, on a woman approaching sixty. His father had come in from his sales rounds and had doffed his brown tweed jacket and loosened his tie.
They sat at the table that had been in the kitchen all Dave’s life: an odd, round table with sturdy white legs supporting a top covered with some kind of red vinyl plastic that resisted every accident and was scarred with cigarette ash burns. The kitchen floor was covered with linoleum—which Dave had called “minoleum” until he was twelve years old. The linoleum was worn at four places under the table, where shoes had scuffed it for twenty-five years.
Dave could not help but subside into a euphoric, reminiscent state when he sat in this kitchen. It was where he came from. It was who he was.
“You got something put away, in savings?” his father asked, innocently concerned.
“Well … to start with, the house is worth every nickel I’m paying for it. It’s going to be an asset. It’s an investment. I didn’t do this without studying the market for real estate in northern New Jersey. Two years from now it will be worth three hundred thousand. Trust me. I know it will.”
“I guess you know something about investment,” his father conceded.
Dave blew a loud sigh. “Something, yeah.”
“You made a lot of money the last year or so. I hear …”
“Uh-huh. And it puts Amy and the kids in a nice house on a nice wooded property. Plus … it makes me look good.”
“Which is important,” said his mother. “In your business.”
Dave sighed again. “Sometimes I don’t think you approve of my business—no matter if I make money or not.”
“I can’t understand it,” his mother said. “In his business, your father sells things you can put your hands on and feel and weigh. In your business, you sell things nobody can touch … or understand, or value. If I buy what you sell, what do I have? A piece of paper that may be worth something or may be worth nothing. How can I tell?”
“You can tell,” said Dave. “I can’t give you a crash course in the securities market.”
“Well … it somehow seems less than honest, just to juggle paper around and take money from it. In the end, what can you say you create? Anything?”
“Capital. Wealth. That people invest. Which creates, among other things, jobs. We don’t live like people used to do, when you sold cows and horses, shoes, hats, nails … We—”
“Or groceries,” his father said.
“Or groceries. It’s a new world, a new economy.”
“How much you make last year, you don’t mind my asking?”
“I really don’t know. I’ve got accountants working on it, so I’ll pay my taxes.”
His mother frowned at him. “You also got a girlfriend, haven’t you? We heard—”
“I did have. But that’s over. She played a recital last month in Alice Tully Hall. She doesn’t n
eed me anymore.”
“Alice Tully … ?” his mother asked. “This is—?”
“She’s a concert artist. And she’s making it big. She doesn’t need to sleep with a stockbroker.”
“That’s frank,” said his father. “That’s honest.”
“I helped her,” said Dave. “Maybe I contributed a little something to her success. If so, I’m proud to have done it.”
His mother frowned hard. “Now this girl is out of your life, maybe you’ll concentrate on Amy. She’s a fine young woman. A wonderful wife for you.”
II
Amy tried to be. She knew what he liked and wanted, and she tried to satisfy him. She went around their new house, after the children were in bed, in sexy lingerie because she knew he liked it. She read books on how to make herself more exciting.
Amy was desperate. She knew he didn’t love her anymore—or if he loved her, it was not exclusively. She felt herself losing him. She couldn’t help it if her belly had not entirely flattened after pregnancies. The enlargement of her ass was maybe something else.
“I don’t entirely understand the apartment,” she said.
“Well, if you think it’s a love nest for Greta, forget it. That’s history. I just need a little place where the action is, where I can be at work from dawn if need be. I’ve got two phone lines and, believe it or not, a computer. It’s an office. You’re welcome there anytime. And you don’t have to call me in advance.”
They were talking about a tiny apartment he had leased in SoHo—meaning south of Houston Street, which New Yorkers pronounced How-ston—lower Manhattan.
“What does Mr. Jenkins think of it?”
“He doesn’t know about it. I’m not long with Barnaby, Jenkins—which he well knows. Jenkins is satisfied with what he is and where he is. Not me. I’m going somewhere else.”
“Take me with you, Dave.”
Dave looked at her. “You’re my partner, babe,” he said and laughed. What else could he say, she looked pitiful.
III
He spent less and less time at the tree-shaded home in New Jersey. He immersed himself in his work and stayed in the little apartment. He was right in telling Amy she could come anytime without advance notice. He gave her a key.
His business had changed.
“I’ve been looking for a young man like you.”
“I’ve been looking for a man like you,” Dave responded.
They sat in the luxurious East Seventy-second Street apartment of Bob Leeman. The apartment occupied two floors of a building with a view of the East River from its windows. Essentially, Leeman lived on the eighth floor and kept his office on the ninth. The apartment featured hardwood floors and a few oriental rugs here and there. Leeman owned some distinguished art, including a Pollock.
It also featured two naked teenaged girls, neither of them more than seventeen years old. Leeman was known for this: for taking in girls and making them his, for his pleasure or others. He had made it clear that one of them, Janelle Griffith by name, was assigned to David Shea and would do whatever Leeman’s money might buy from her.
Janelle was more mature than her years. She was comfortable with her role. She had supple breasts—one with a tiny black mole on it—and almost no pubic hair, but she was glad to let the two men see her nude. In fact, she conspicuously gloried in it. She smiled and drank only a little champagne and kept herself close to the man she was being paid to please.
“We can talk in front of them,” said Leeman. “They’re too damned dumb to have any idea what it means.”
Dave heard that judgment skeptically, but Leeman was calling the shots. He was a corporate raider. His business was acquiring corporations, looting them by selling off their best assets, and leaving the minority stockholders with a bankrupt shell.
Bob Leeman was a teetotaler. He also ate sparingly. All his considerable energy was focused on his business, and he regarded alcohol and the digestion of rich food as unnecessary diversions of strength. His sole indulgence was little girls.
He was short, no more than five feet four. He was bald. What little hair he had, he shaved off. His face was broad and open. His smile was infectious. He was capable of transferring his enthusiasms to others.
“You know my business,” he said to Dave. “You know what I do. You’re smart enough. You’ve researched me.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t call me sir. Jesus Christ, don’t call me sir. I’m Bob, Dave, and let’s go on from there.”
Dave nodded.
“You know my base corporation is Minnesota Copper. Hell, we don’t produce a ton of copper a year. Did in the past, but … Anyway, I acquired it and have ever since used it as a corporate base. The son of a bitch was cash-rich, once. I used that cash to buy … Well, you know. One company, then another company. It owned a corporate jet. Boy, did I use it! And, believe it or not, a yacht on Lake Superior. That was damned good for taking my little girls out on cruises. I mean … you know the story.”
“The SEC raised hell,” said Dave.
Leeman nodded. “In a year when MG lost thirty-two million, I took a salary and perks worth four million. Oh, yeah. The government raised hell. But they couldn’t establish anything illegal. I gave up the jet and the yacht, and they were happy and went away.”
“Well … what’s up now, Bob?”
“I want to take over McLeod. They know it, and they’ll fight me. If I acquire five percent or more of their stock, I have to file a 13-D, disclosing my position. What I’m looking for is investors who can buy three or four percent—whose names won’t be identified with me. When we’ve got enough we can swoop in and take McLeod.”
“What’s so good about McLeod?”
“Cash, to start with. Besides, it owns half a dozen subsidiaries in different lines of business. I can liquidate some of those and merge others into my companies.”
“A hostile takeover,” said Dave.
Leeman grinned. “I’m not hostile. The McLeod management is.”
“You think I’ve got clients who can invest enough?”
“They can when they understand I’m putting up the money. Look. There’ll be no risk for these investors. If they put in their own money, I’ll guarantee they can’t lose. McLeod is selling at 30. Suppose it drops to 25¼. I’ll make them whole for the difference. Or … I’ll advance the money, and they won’t have anything at risk. All I demand is that they vote as I require.”
Dave pulled in a deep breath. “Without of course disclosing—”
“Of course. Our secret. I figure the stock will go up a minimum of ten points immediately after I acquire McLeod. They unload at that point and take their profits. They unload in any case. I don’t want them for stockholders. I’ll buy their shares.”
Dave glanced at the two naked girls. He wondered how Leeman could have such confidence that they didn’t understand and wouldn’t talk. “I don’t have to tell you how illegal it is,” he said. “The SEC will go into hysterics.”
“If the SEC finds out. And we’re going to make it our business to be sure they don’t find out. And that depends largely on you. identifying the right investors. We need guys who are greedy enough to do something illegal. Of course … if one of them rats on us, he is in as big trouble as I would be.”
Dave ran his hand along Janelle’s thigh. “This brings up something, Bob. You know I do research. You’ve got—what?—twenty-four corporations? For most of them you’re not even holding annual stockholders meetings. Some of them don’t even have boards of directors. And that’s fine. But I think you need to go through the motions.”
“You going to tell me how to run my businesses?”
“At the risk of losing you as a potential client, yes. You’re also late in filing 13-Ds. Your audits are … pitiful. You’re steering toward a disaster. You run your business like a fief. Why wave a red flag at the SEC bull?”
“Go on.”
“Hell, you run these companies. You’ve got guys who will do
what you tell them. Hold meetings and go through the motions of being corporations. And get your goddamned accountants to make real audits, even if you have to transfer money from one company to another temporarily.”
Leeman grinned again. “What you figure I’m going to pay you for handling this deal?”
“I’m afraid to ask.”
“Okay. You make it work, Dave, and you’re gonna come out a million richer—on this deal.”
“Can I ask how?”
“I’ll pay you, say, a quarter of a mill. But I’ll give you a market tip. I don’t know what it is yet, but it’ll be a good one. You’ll come out with a million, at least.”
“Insider information.”
Leeman shrugged. “Always good, if nobody knows where it came from.”
Janelle snuggled up to Dave, and he guessed from the look in her wise young eyes that she had understood every word of the conversation. In the wildest stretch of his imagination he could not have divined that she would one day, years later, be his third wife.
IV
Julian Musgrave favored Italian food, so he and Dave sat over dinner in a booth in Jersey City, swallowing Chianti and eating veal and pasta.
“So why you come to me with this deal, Dave?”
“’Cause we know something about each other, Julian. Nixon said he was not a crook. But he was. And so am I. And so are you. What I’m offering you is a chance to make a piss pot full of money. At no risk. All you have to do is take the deal and keep your mouth shut about it.”
“Illegal?”
“It was illegal to finance a football player at Rutgers. But you did it, for reasons of your own. And I’m not the only one, not by a long shot. My dad, incidentally, still drives that Buick you sold him cheap. I don’t owe you any favors, Julian. And you don’t owe me any. I’m looking for guys who are just greedy enough and just cunning enough to take advantage of an opportunity that’s just a wee bit shady.”
Never Enough Page 5