I watch the waves and settle in to wait.
CHAPTER FOUR
The first rule of tax season is never to answer the phone. I do, though, certain that it’s Pardo, calling to accept the offer of primo Knicks tickets I left with his assistant just minutes ago.
“Jake Teller,” I say.
“Mr. Teller.” I recognize the voice of senior partner Abe Stein. “What’s the first rule of tax season?”
“Screen your calls.”
“Good. Abe Stein here. Could I see you in my office, please?”
“Sure.”
I look at the foot-high pile of tax returns in my in-box, then at the slew of pink message slips. Each will be a client wanting last-minute advice. Even the stodgy ones get pretty creative as tax day nears, and they call us for fresh explanations of the distinction between dodge and deductible. I walk down the long hall, through reception, then down the carpeted hall of the south wing, to Mr. Stein’s corner office. A visit here can only mean more work, and as I knock on the heavy mahogany door, I already feel nostalgic for the fourteen-hour days of the past two weeks. Just let it be a straight return — nothing from out of left field.
“Come in.”
Mr. Stein sits behind an impressive rosewood desk. He has the quiet air of a professor, but the word in the halls is that when the senior partners get together, he speaks last and loudest. In front of him, in one of the two leather client chairs that face his desk, sits a young woman.
“Hello, Jake,” says Mr. Stein. “Do you know Mimi Lessing?”
“Just barely,” I say.
We met for ten seconds on my first morning. In the crush of work ever since, I’d forgotten her, though I don’t see how I could have. She is beautiful. Lithe, a runner maybe, with clear brown eyes and olive skin. Beneath her light suit she wears a camisole, which pulls away from the top of her smooth chest as she leans forward to shake my hand.
“Hi,” she says, her hand small, warm.
“Hi.”
“I’m putting you two on an account,” says Mr. Stein.
I must be living right. Ten nice Jewish boys and her, and I draw her. I take a seat.
“Mimi,” says Mr. Stein, “Do you remember an Andrew Brice?” Mimi tries to place the name but can’t quite, and Mr. Stein points with an open hand at the wall. “Go have a look at that frame, you two.” We stand and walk to a gilt-edged frame that holds an ancient, dignified page of company letterhead. The page has yellowed and the corners have flaked away. The ink is faded but legible.
“It’s a tax statement,” I say.
“It is indeed. For one Theodore Brice, for the fiscal year 1924. Can you read the figures?”
I step closer to the glass. “One hundred ten thousand dollars?”
“That’s right. More than Babe Ruth made. Theodore Brice served with our founding partner, Fred Hyson, in the Great War. Hyson came back and founded this firm. Brice came back and went to law school, and then to work for the Rockefellers. How is your American history?”
I look at Mimi.
“That was the time of Standard Oil,” she says.
“Very good. Come, sit down.” We do. “Brice was a shark lawyer back before these waters were infested with them. A pioneer of the big deal, and the practice of securing a hefty percentage for the lawyer who closed it.”
“And we did his taxes?” she asks.
“Fred Hyson did them personally. And they developed a custom. Each year on April first, Brice took Hyson to lunch at the Algonquin. After their meal Brice would order a Rob Roy, spill a drop on his tax sheet for luck, and then sign his name.”
Mimi leans forward, and the camisole parts from her skin again. She raises a hand and presses it to her. “Andrew Brice,” she says. “I remember now. Last year at this time, at the elevators. You introduced us.” Mr. Stein nods. “So he’s a legacy.” He nods again.
“And he carries on his father’s custom?” I ask.
“After a fashion. The son didn’t quite inherit the old man’s spark or drive.”
“In financial matters?”
“In all matters.” Mr. Stein leans toward his desk, and I notice for the first time the two account folders on top of it. He picks up the heavier one. “Theodore Brice died in 1970 a rich man. A month later his only son — Andrew — liquidated all the assets, except for some property upstate. Preferred to take his inheritance in cash, apparently.” He lays the folder back on the desk. “After estate taxes and what have you, that inheritance was ten million dollars. And as far as we can tell, he’s lived off that and nothing else ever since.”
“He doesn’t work?” I ask.
“Not a W-two in thirty years.” He picks up the second folder and opens it. “No record of any income, outside of interest.”
“He made money in the markets, maybe?” says Mimi.
“I’m not sure Brice knows a stock from a bond. He’s never bought either. His investment strategy was to split his ten million evenly between twenty accounts —five hundred thousand in each.”
“He’s afraid of bank failures?” I ask.
“Or war. Or famine. Or locusts. Brice is not your standard rational investor.”
“But we must have advised him of other options,” says Mimi.
“George Hyson, son of the founder, broached the topic in 1971, at their first lunch. Andrew Brice made it clear that it was not to be raised again. And it hasn’t been.” Mr. Stein takes off his glasses and wipes them with a soft cloth. “Every firm has its concessions to company lore. Brice is ours. You know the term for them?” He looks at me.
“Courtesy cases,” I say.
He nods. “Brice’s taxes take an hour a year. Which, by the way, he insists we bill him at staffers’ rates. Thus, his annual worth to Hyson, Levay is eighty-five dollars.” Mr. Stein replaces his glasses and looks at each of us again. “You’re trying to think of a polite way to ask what all this has to do with you.” He pauses.
“Something has gotten into our courtesy case. It’s been five years since George Hyson retired and left to me the honor of accompanying Brice to lunch. In those five years Brice has never once called this office. Never had a tax question. Never solicited a shred of financial advice. He simply appears at noon on April first each year, takes me to lunch, signs his tax return and the bill. Until this morning.”
“He called?” says Mimi.
“Yes. He’s been doing some thinking, and he’s concluded that an investment strategy would be prudent after all.”
Mimi and I exchange a look. Her cheeks are high and fine, a hint of flush to them. “After thirty years?” she says.
Mr. Stein nods. “After thirty years.” He’s silent again, his eyes leaving us for a French watercolor on the wall, resting on it a second, then coming back. “Mimi, you made a stronger impression on our legacy than he did on you.”
“I did?”
“He’s asked that you be assigned to his account.”
“I only met him for a second.”
“Yes. Well, he’s requested you, and when we can, we try to keep our legacies happy.”
He pauses again, and now leans forward. Here comes the hammer.
“Brice wants a crash course in modern money management,” Mr. Stein says. He pulls a note card from the thin folder, then looks over it at us. “Money markets, Treasury bonds, mutual funds, commodities, derivatives — the history and prospects of each.”
Christ. Why not physics and space travel, too? Mr. Stein looks at me. “Now you know why you’re here, Mr. Teller.”
The man read my résumé. Actually read it. Under “Specialties” I listed “financial instruments.” A bit of a stretch, as my only exposure to them was a three-week winter-term course my senior year at Ham Tech. Jeremy was my roommate at the time, and my coursemate, too, and thanks to a torrid stretch at the dice cup, I spent my mornings sleeping off the winter-term parties while he trudged through the snow to class, notebook in hand. I don’t think I made it to three of them. As for the notes,
I have a clear image of standing in back of the frat house the night of finals, dropping them onto the bonfire.
“He wants five investment scenarios,” says Mr. Stein, “With estimated exposure and rates of return on each — for both bull and bear markets. I’ll need all of this on my desk the morning of the first—ten days from today.” He looks at us. “You can manage this?”
Mimi nods. “I’m sure we can,” she says. He looks at me, and I nod, too.
“At least you’ll be spared lunch. Largesse is another quality Andrew failed to inherit from his father. Last year, if I recall, it was a sandwich and a tonic water at the Carnegie Deli.” He leans forward with the two account folders. “I don’t know what we can expect from Brice — nothing, maybe. But his account’s been a nonperformer for thirty years. It’s worth a shot.”
We each take a folder.
“That’s it, you two. Thank you.”
We stand and walk together out of the office. Mimi closes the door behind us and looks at me, smiling.
“Are you as swamped as I am?” she asks as we walk down the hall toward Reception. Her perfume is light, alluring.
“Two weeks here and this is as far as I’ve made it from my desk.”
She laughs. “I know the feeling. We’ll have to do this at night, won’t we?”
“Yes.”
“Tonight’s out — the send-off party for Diane Silio. Will you be there?”
“I will,” I say.
“Shall we work out a schedule then?”
“Sure.”
We’re both quiet a second. “All right, then,” she says, as we walk from Reception into the north wing. “Back to the salt mines. See you tonight, Jake.”
She smiles and walks off toward her office. I watch her turn the corner. Ten seconds pass and still I’m standing in the hallway, staring at the far wall.
After my parents died, I was raised by my grandfather. “You won’t see it coming, Jake,” he told me once. “And you won’t be able to explain it. But you’ll know.” I walk slowly back to my office and sit down at my desk. I reach for the phone. Jeremy answers on the second ring.
“Jeremy Nascent.”
“Jeremy, it’s Jake. How would you like to see the Knicks next week? With me and Pardo. Third row.”
“Wow,” he says, but I hear the note of nervousness that I’m always bringing out in him. “What do you need, Jake?”
“Two things. I need you to look over a client file for me. And I need a crash course in financial instruments.”
“What for?”
“To impress a girl.”
He laughs. “You’ll be sure to credit me, right?”
“If it ever comes up.”
“Okay, Jake. Come over tonight with the file.”
“How about tomorrow at lunch?”
“Fine.”
I hang up the phone and spin slowly in my chair to face the window. I look out at the bright Manhattan sky. Tomorrow I’ll learn about financial instruments and the investment needs of Andrew Brice. Tonight is the farewell party for Diane Silio. Everyone in the firm will be there. Including Mimi Lessing.
See you tonight, Jake, she said. I close my eyes.
Yes, she will. And she’ll see me in action.
• • •
Diane Silio gave her notice the day I joined the firm. This night has been coming ever since.
Diane is the first thing I see when I step off the elevator each morning, a coffee-eyed girl from the Brooklyn avenues, her snowy skin a cool come-on amidst the dark leathers of the reception area. She was hired out of high school seven years ago, back when our partners could still get away with choosing a receptionist for her ass. She’s kept it, and a lot more, and yet is that rare Brooklyn looker who slips through the neighborhood gauntlet of cops and plumbers right out onto the open market. She’s been an asset here, I’m sure, inspired to efficiency each day by the aura of money that soaks this place, but careful, too, to wear her slit skirts cut at the knee and her blouses open at the throat, letting her trim legs and creamy swell work on the guys here the way candy at the corner store tempts from beneath the glass.
There’s been current between us from the first. We haven’t said a hundred words in my two weeks here, but her calm eyes hold mine an extra quarter second each time I bring her a latte from downstairs, and her voice, crisp and distant when she puts through calls to the other accountants, is close, even warm when she puts them through to me. Part of it is pure good luck, catching her in the flush of her last days, her mind lulled already by the black sand of Maui, by the two weeks of tropical drinks and free license that she will escape to with a girlfriend tomorrow, before easing into her new and better life as a legal secretary uptown.
There’s more to it than luck, though. The ten other guy associates here are steady, wire-rimmed plodders who read the Tax Code in their free time and might have three dates and one score between them in the past year. They may all make partner before I do, but none has what it takes to stir the blood of Miss Silio, and none would dare dream of cashing in on her giddy last day.
I was hired as much for being a regular guy as for any magic I’ll ever work with a tax return. I earned a third-team all-NESCAC selection in hoops up at Ham Tech. As a basketball honor, all that means is that I could hold my own with any white kid under six-three between Albany and Buffalo, but in the interview room here at Hyson, Levay, that and my proud admission to being a TDXer put me over the top. Sol Levine, the hiring partner, knows the money business. He knows that the best accountants are grinders, and he’s packed the firm with a dogged crew of them. But he knows the search for capital is still half the game, and he sensed that I might be able to go beer for beer with the goyim jocks and frat boys that this firm needs to bring aboard if its financial ship is to sail as tall in the new century as it did in the old.
Part of my job is to go after these guys, my classmates of five short years ago. Chi Psis and Psi Us who staggered across the stage at graduation, talking through their hangovers about Jamaica, Antigua, St. Martin, about the three months of sun and spleefs that would wipe out whatever scrap of their liberal education had managed to survive senior week and enable them to start fresh and ruthless at big Wall Street firms in the fall. Some of them are pulling down serious bucks now, and a few times a month I’ll be expected to treat one to our floor seats at the Garden or to eighteen holes out on Amagansett or even, if he’s that kind of guy, to a night at Scores, the thinking being that down the line, when they decide they need someone to count their money for them, they’ll remember Sprewell dunking over Shaq or the three-wood they blasted to the green or the blond angel with the schoolgirl smile who rocked back on her golden ass, uncrossed her high-heeled ankles, and offered them a long, sweet look at heaven. They’ll remember, and they’ll reach for the phone and give us a call.
That’s the theory, anyway. We’ll see. And if it costs me? If I go so high and no higher, and watch as the grinders march past on their way to partner? So be it. Because right now all those grinders are staring into the dull green glow of the spreadsheets they took home with them for the weekend, and I’m watching from a limo as Diane Silio steps from a bar doorway into the soft light of a streetlamp, the wind tugging at the open collar of her blouse as she gives our secretaries a last hug good-bye and now walks, taut and lithe, away from her old life and toward a night she hasn’t begun to imagine.
It is the custom of the firm, on the last day of one of its own, to fete them at the Porterfield, in the financial district, an immaculate homage to gentleman culture and a favorite of the partners. At five o’clock the secretaries and some of us junior associates took Diane over, and for two hours she sat in our center along the gleaming brass bar, sipping Kahlua and cream, her legs crossed demurely on the rung of a barstool. Her eyes found mine more than once, even after the partners started dropping in, each staying long enough for a martini or an old-fashioned and then each invoking clients or family, handing Diane a gold-edged parting env
elope, accepting the hug they’d waited seven years for, and leaving for their garages and cars and Connecticut weekends.
As they took their turns with her, I looked toward the door and saw Mimi Lessing come through it. She shook her long hair once, softly, and walked toward the group. I ordered a glass of white wine from the bartender and held it out to her as she reached us.
“Jake Teller,” she said, smiling. “Why, thank you.”
“To life after tax season,” I said, touching my glass to hers.
“Amen.” In the soft light of the bar her dark hair shimmered, and again my eyes went to the smooth skin beneath her camisole. “My last glass till April first,” she said. She took a sip. “So, you’ve been with us two weeks?”
“Yes.”
“What brought you?”
“The odds. Two hundred associates at Grant Thornton and eight partners.”
She laughed. “Here it’s twelve and four. Well, you picked a fine time to start.” Mimi’s eyes looked past me a second. She lowered her voice. “You must know Diane well,” she said.
“Why?”
“She’s watching you.”
She was. The last of the partners had gone by then, and everyone had relaxed. Diane, warmed by the two drinks, the attention, the dark outline of the crisp hundreds in the envelopes on her lap, had pulled the clip from her smooth hair and leaned into the last hour of her special night. “Who’s been to Maui?” she asked, her eyes on mine, and when I said a buddy of mine had gone last year and come back certain that at twenty-six the two best weeks of his life were behind him, she moved aside so I could get next to her at the bar. “Excuse me,” I said to Mimi, who tipped her wineglass to me. I caught the barest trace of rose in Diane’s perfume as I slid next to her, counted six buttons on her cream blouse before it disappeared into her gray skirt. “What did he like best?” she asked, and her brown eyes, soft as a teen queen’s, filled with life as I told her of the warm ash she could wade in in the open mouths of the volcanoes and of the trained dolphins that would swim with the guests in the hotel coves. Her crossed legs started to bob gently. A minute later I looked at my watch.
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