by Richard Ford
When Kendall was growing up, American politicians denied that the United Stales was an empire. But they weren’t doing that anymore. They’d given up. Everyone knew about the empire now. Everyone was pleased.
And in the streets of Chicago, as in the streets of L.A., New York, Houston, and Oakland, the message was making itself known. A few weeks back, Kendall had seen the movie “Patton” on TV. He’d been reminded that the general had been severely punished for slapping a soldier. Whereas now Rumsfeld ran free from responsibility for Abu Ghraib. Even the President, who’d lied about W.M.D., had been reelected. In the streets, people took the point. Victory was what counted, power, muscularity, doublespeak if necessary. You saw it in the way people drove, in the way they cut you off, gave you the finger, cursed. Women and men alike, showing rage and toughness. Everyone knew what he wanted and how to get it. Everybody you met was nobody’s fool.
One’s country was like one’s self. The more you learned about it, the more you were ashamed of.
Then again, it wasn’t pure torture, living in the plutocracy. Jimmy was still out in Montecito, and every weekday Kendall had the run of his place. There were serf-like doormen, invisible porters who hauled out the trash, a squad of Polish maids who came Wednesday and Friday mornings to pick up after Kendall and scrub the toilet in the Moorish bathroom and tidy up the sunny kitchen where he ate his lunch. The co-op was a duplex. Kendall worked on the second floor. Downstairs was Jimmy’s “Jade Room,” where he kept his collection of Chinese jade in museum-quality display cases. The carvings were made from single pieces of jade and were usually of horses’ heads, enfolded upon themselves. Jimmy kept what he couldn’t show off in specially built, curatorial drawers. (If you had criminality in mind, a good place to start would be the Jade Room.)
In his office, when Kendall looked up from his Tocqueville, he could see the opalescent lake spreading out in all directions. The surround of water at this altitude made for a fish-tank sensation. Water, water, everywhere. The curious emptiness Chicago confronted, the way it just dropped off into nothing, especially at sunset or in the fog, this void was responsible for all the activity. The land had been waiting to be exploited. These shores so suited to industry and commerce had raised a thousand factories. The factories had sent vehicles of steel throughout the world, and now these vehicles, in armored form, were clashing for control of the petroleum that powered the whole operation.
The phone rang. It was Jimmy, calling from Montecito.
“Hello, Jimmy, how are you?”
“Not bad,” Jimmy said. “It’s only three in the afternoon and I’ve already had my cock out three times.”
One nice thing about being obscenely rich was the liberty it afforded you to utter sentences such as this. But Jimmy’s impropriety predated his money. It was the reason for his money.
“Sounds like retirement agrees with you,” Kendall said.
“What are you talking about?” Jimmy said, laughing. “I’m not retired. I’ve got more going on now than when I was thirty. Speaking of which, I’m returning your call. What’s up, kiddo?”
“Right,” Kendall said, gearing up. “I’ve been running the house for six years now and I think you’ve been happy with my work.”
“I have been,” Jimmy said. “No complaints.”
“So I was wondering, given my tenure here, and my performance, if it might be possible to work out some kind of health-insurance coverage.”
“Can’t do it,” Jimmy answered abruptly. The suddenness with which he spoke suggested he was defending himself against his feelings. “That was never part of your package. I’m running a nonprofit here, kiddo. Piasecki just sent me the statements. We’re in the red this year. We’re in the red every year. All these books we publish, important, foundational, patriotic books—truly patriotic books—and nobody buys them! The people in this country are asleep! We’ve got an entire nation on Ambien. Sandman Rove is blowing dust in everybody’s eyes.”
He went off on a tear, anathematizing Bush and Wolfowitz and Perle, but then he must have felt bad about avoiding the subject at hand because he came back to it, softening his tone. “Listen, I know you’ve got a family. You’ve got to do what’s best for you. If you wanted to test your value out in the marketplace, I’d understand. I’d hate to lose you, Kendall, but I’d understand if you have to move on.”
There was silence on the line.
Jimmy said, “You think about it.” He cleared his throat. “So, tell me. How’s ‘The Pocket Democracy’ coming?”
Kendall wished he could remain businesslike, professional. He tried his best to keep bitterness out of his voice. He’d been a pouter as a kid, however, and the pleasures of pouting were still enticing.
He said nothing.
“When do you think you’ll have something to show me?” Jimmy asked.
“No idea.”
“What was that?”
“I’ve got no answer at the moment,” Kendall said.
“I’m running a business, Kendall,” Jimmy said before hanging up. “I’m sorry.”
The sun was setting. The water reflected the gray-blue of the darkening sky, and the lights of the water-pumping stations had come on, making them look like a line of floating gazebos. Kendall’s mood had dimmed, too. He slumped in his office chair, the Xeroxed pages of “Democracy in America” spread out around him. His left temple throbbed. He winced and, rubbing his forehead, looked down at the page in front of him:
I do not mean that there is any lack of wealthy individuals in the United Stales; I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken stronger hold on the affections of men and where a profounder contempt is expressed for the theory of the permanent equality of property. But wealth circulates with inconceivable rapidity, and experience shows that it is rare to find two succeeding generations in the full enjoyment of it.
He swivelled in his chair and violently grabbed the phone off its hook. He stabbed out the number and after a single ring Piasecki answered. Kendall told Piasecki to meet him at the Coq d’Or.
This was how you did it. This was taking action. In an instant, everything could change.
At the Coq d’Or, they sat in their usual booth in the back room. Kendall stared across the table at Piasecki and said, “About that idea you had the other day.”
Piasecki gave Kendall a sideways look, suspicious. “You serious or you just playing around?”
“I’m curious,” Kendall said.
“Don’t fuck with me,” Piasecki cautioned.
“I’m not.” Kendall was blinking rapidly. “I was just wondering how it would work. Technically speaking.” Piasecki leaned closer to Kendall and lowered his voice. “I never said what I’m about to say, O.K.?”
“O.K.”
“If you do something like this, what you do is you set up a dummy company. You create invoices from this company, O.K.? Great Experiment pays these invoices. After a few years, you close the account and liquidate the company.”
Kendall didn’t understand exactly. It couldn’t be that complicated, but he was unclear on a few points.
“But the invoices won’t be for anything. Won’t that be obvious?”
“When’s the last time Jimmy checked the invoices? He’s eighty-two, for Christ sake. He’s out in California taking Viagra so he can bang some hooker. He’s not thinking about the invoices. His mind is occupied.”
“What if we get audited?”
Here Piasecki smiled. “I like how you say ‘we.’ That’s where I come in. If we get audited, who handles that? I do. I show the I.R.S. the bills and the payments. Since our payments into the dummy company match the bills, everything looks fine. If we pay the right taxes on income, how is the I.R.S. going to complain?”
It wasn’t all that complicated. Kendall wasn’t used to thinking this way, not just criminally but financially, but as his executive pour went down, he saw how it could work. He looked around the bar, at the businessmen boozing, making deals.
“I’m not talking about that much,” Piasecki was saying. “Jimmy’s worth, like, eighty million. I’m talking maybe half a million for you, half for me. Maybe, if things go smooth, a million each. Then we shut it down, cover our tracks, and move to Bermuda.”
Piasecki leaned forward and with burning, needy eyes, said, “Jimmy makes more than a million in the markets every four months. It’s nothing to him.”
“What if something goes wrong? I’ve got a family.”
“And I don’t? It’s my family I’m thinking of. It’s not like things are fair in this country. Things are unfair. Why should a smart guy like you not get a little piece of the pie? Are you scared?”
“Yes,” Kendall said.
“Listen to me. I’ll be honest. If we do this, you should be a little scared. Just a little. But, statistically, I’d put the chances at our getting caught at about one per cent. Maybe less.”
For Kendall it was exciting, somehow, just to be having this conversation. Everything about the Coq d’Or, from the fatty appetizers to the Tin Pan Alley entertainment to the faux-Napoleonic décor, suggested it was 1926. Under the influence of the atmosphere, it seemed to Kendall that he and Piasecki were leaning conspiratorially together, foreheads almost touching. They’d seen the Mafia movies, so they knew how to do it. Kendall wanted to laugh. He’d thought this kind of thing was over. He thought that because of the rise of postmodern irony the durable street rackets and shady backroom dealing had gone out of style. But he was wrong. Kendall was so smart he was stupid. He’d figured criminality was like academia, progressive, built on one movement succeeding another. But the same scheming that had gone on eighty years ago was going on now. This was especially true in Chicago, where even the bar decor colluded to promote an underworld effect.
“I’m telling you, we could be in and out in two years,” Piasecki was saying. “We do it nice and easy and leave no trail. Then we invest our money and do our part for the G.D.P.”
What was an intellectual but a guy who thought? Who thought instead of did. What would it be like to do? To apply his brain to the small universe of money instead of the battle between Jefferson and the Federalists?
This made Kendall contemplate how Stephanie would view all this. He would never be able to tell her about it. He’d have to say he’d been given a raise. Simultaneous with this thought was another: renovating your kitchen wasn’t a red flag. They could do the whole house without attracting attention.
In his mind he saw his fixer-upper all fixed up, a gleaming, wood-polished house, a stop on the Oak Park landmark tour, and, sliding down the bannister, into his providing, fatherly arms, Eleanor.
Wealth circulates with inconceivable rapidity . . .
The full enjoyment of it . . .
“O.K., I’m in,” Kendall said.
“You’re in?”
“Let me think about it,” Kendall said.
That was sufficient for Piasecki for now. He lifted his glass. “To Ken Lay,” he said. “My hero.”
“What sort of business is this you’re opening?”
“It’s a storage facility.”
“And you’re?”
“The president. Co-president.”
“With Mr.”—the lawyer, a squat woman with thatchlike hair, searched on the incorporation form—“with Mr. Piasecki.”
“That’s right,” Kendall said.
It was a Saturday afternoon. Kendall was in downtown Oak Park, in the lawyer’s meagre, diploma-showy office. Max was outside on the sidewalk, catching autumn leaves, staring up at the sky with hands outstretched.
“I could use some storage,” the lawyer joked. “We’ve got three kids and our house is stuffed.”
“We mainly do commercial storage,” Kendall said. “We don’t have a lot of little storage lockers but just a few big ones. Sorry.”
He hadn’t even seen the place, which was up in the sticks, outside Kewanee. Piasecki had driven up and leased the land. There was nothing on it but an old, weed-choked Esso station. But it had a legal address, and soon, as Midwestern Storage, a steady income.
Great Experiment, since it sold few books, had a lot of books on hand. In addition to storing them in their usual warehouse, in Schaumburg, Kendall would now send a phantom number of books up to the facility in Kewanee. Midwestern Storage would charge Great Experiment for this service, and Piasecki would send the company checks. As soon as the incorporation forms were filed, Piasecki planned to open a bank account in Midwestern Storage’s name. Signatories to this account: Michael J. Piasecki and Kendall Wallis.
It was all quite elegant. Kendall and Piasecki owned a legal company. The company earned money legally, paid its taxes; the two of them split the profit and claimed it as business income on their tax returns. That the warehouse was a broken-down gas station, that it housed no books—who was ever to know?
“I just hope the old guy doesn’t kick,” Piasecki had said. “We’ve got to pray for the health of Jimmy’s prostate.”
When Kendall had signed the required forms, the lawyer said, “O.K., I’ll file these papers for you Monday. And that’s all there is to it. Congratulations, you’re the proud new owner of a corporation in the state of Illinois.”
Outside, Max was still whirling beneath the falling leaves.
“How many did you catch, buddy?” Kendall asked his son.
“Sixty-two!” Max shouted.
Kendall, copies of the papers tucked under his arm, looked up at the sky to watch the leaves, red and gold, spinning down toward the earth. The air smelled of autumn, of leaf raking, of the dependable and virtuous Midwest.
And now it was a Monday morning in January, start of a new week, and Kendall was on the train again, reading about America: “There is one country in the world where the great social revolution that I am speaking of seems to have nearly reached its natural limits.” Kendall had a new pair of shoes on, two-tone cordovans from the Allen Edmonds store on Michigan Avenue. Otherwise, he looked the way he always did, same chinos, same shiny-elbowed corduroy jacket. Nobody on the train would have guessed that he wasn’t the mild, bookish figure he appeared to be. No one would have imagined Kendall making his weekly drop-off at the mailbox outside the all-cash building (to keep the doormen from noticing the deposit envelopes addressed to the Kewanee bank). Seeing Kendall jotting figures in his newspaper, most riders assumed he was working out a Sudoku puzzle instead of estimating potential earnings from a five-year C.D. Kendall in his editor-wear had the perfect disguise. He was like Poe’s purloined letter, hiding in plain sight.
Who said he wasn’t smart?
The fear had been greatest the first few weeks. Kendall would awaken at 3 a.m. with what felt like a battery cable hooked to his navel. The current surged through him, as he sweated and twitched. What if Jimmy noticed the printing, shipping, and warehouse costs for the phantom books? What if Piasecki drunkenly confessed to a Ukrainian barmaid whose brother was a cop? Kendall’s mind whirled with potential mishaps and dangers. How had he got into something like this with someone like that? In their transforming bedroom, with Stephanie sleeping beside him, unaware that she was bedding down with a criminal, Kendall lay awake for hours, jittery with visions of jail time and perp walks and the loss of his children.
It got easier after a while. Fear was like any other emotion. From an initial passionate stage, it slowly ebbed until it became routine and then barely noticeable. Plus, things had gone so well. Kendall drew up separate checks, one for the books they actually printed and another for the books he and Piasecki pretended to. On Friday, Piasecki entered these debits in his accounts against weekly income. “It looks like a profit-loss,” he told Kendall. “We’re actually saving Jimmy taxes. He should thank us.”
“Why don’t we let him in on it then?” Kendall said.
Piasecki only laughed. “Even if we did, he’s so out of it he wouldn’t remember.”
Kendall kept to his low-profile plan, too. As the bank account of Midwestern Storage slowly grew,
the same beaten-up old Volvo remained in his driveway. The money stayed away from prying eyes. It showed only inside. In the interior. Kendall said the word now. He said it every night, inspecting the work of the plasterers and carpenters and carpet installers. He was looking into additional interiors as well: the walled gardens of college-savings funds (the garden of Max, the garden of Eleanor); the inner sanctum of a sep-i.r.a
And there was something else hidden away in the interior: a wife. Her name was Arabella. She was from Venezuela and spoke no English. She’d cried with true alarm upon seeing the mountain of laundry in the master bedroom for the first time. But she’d hauled it away to the basement, load by load. Kendall and Stephanie were thrilled.
At the all-cash building, Kendall did something he hadn’t done in a long time: he did his job. He finished abridging “Democracy in America” and Fed-Exed the color-coded manuscript to Jimmy in Montecito. He buried Jimmy under a flurry of new reprint proposals, writing one up every other day and shipping the nominated texts west. Instead of waiting for Jimmy to call the office, Kendall called Jimmy daily, sometimes twice a day, pestering him with questions. Just as Kendall had expected, Jimmy had at first taken his calls and then begun to complain about them and finally had told Kendall to stop bothering him with minutiae and to deal with things himself. Jimmy hardly called the office at all anymore.
Swamping Jimmy with work had been a clever idea. You could learn a lot about human nature, it turned out, from reading books.
The train deposited him at Union Station. Coming out onto Madison Street, Kendall could smell snow. There was a graininess to the air, which had itself warmed and grown windless, as it always did before a storm. Kendall took a cab (paying with untraceable cash) and had the driver let him out a block from the all-cash building. From there he trudged around the corner, looking as though he’d come on foot. With Mike, the doorman on duty, Kendall exchanged a proletarian greeting (they both worked here, after all) on his way to the gilded elevator.
The penthouse was empty. Not even a maid around. Passing the Jade Room, Kendall stepped in to admire the lighted display cases. He pulled open a custom drawer and found a horse’s head. He’d thought jade was meant to be dark green. But that wasn’t so. Jimmy had told him the best jade, the most rare, was light green in color, almost white. As was this equine example. For a moment, the beauty of the thing hit Kendall with full force. A thousand years ago, an artisan had carved this horse from a single piece of jade, rendering the animal in sinuous, pythonic form. Being able to appreciate an object of this kind was what Kendall had always appreciated about himself. What had counted as true riches.