“No dummy accounts? No ripping off pension funds?”
“Fuck you, Mr. Doyle.”
“On a personal level, then. This Hobbs. Could he have been jealous of you and Bronwyn?”
“Hobbs? He introduced us.”
“There was nothing between them?”
Fallon frowned, then shook his head abruptly. “If anything, he encouraged the relationship. A month after we met, he had us up to his ski lodge in Maine. He put us both in the same bedroom. Then at Uncle Jake's funeral ■ he practically ordered us to fly down to his house in Palm Beach. Does that sound like jealousy to you?”
“Might he blame you for her death?”
Fallon considered this, then shook his head once more. Some of them did, he supposed. And he certainly blamed himself. But he'd seen no indication that Hobbs shared that view. Whatever had happened, whatever they found or thought they found, had come well after the night Bronwyn died.
The lawyer drummed his fingers. He wet his lips. It seemed to Fallon that whatever question was now forming in his mind, he was reluctant to ask it. He blinked it away and took a sip of his drink.
“For the record,” he said at last, “in your whole life, I never heard you tell a lie. I never knew you to steal a dime.”
“That means you'll take them on?”
He made a face. “You could lose more than you'd gain.”
Fallon waited.
“Think of a nasty divorce, Michael. Think of a custody battle. The husband, who might be the nearest thing to Jesus Christ in terms of actual behavior, will hear that he's a drunk, a philanderer, a wife-beater, and if, God forbid, the children at issue are girls under ten, he'll hear that he had his hand up their dresses.”
“You're saying I'll get dirty.”
Doyle nodded. “Win or lose. The whispers will never stop.”
And now that look again. As if he were toying with another subject.
“Michael . . .”
He waited again.
“Your uncle . . . never thought much of your career choice. You being on Wall Street, I mean.”
“No, he didn't.”
“Did he ever say why?”
“Sure. He thinks all rich white Protestants are thieves.”
The lawyer smiled, in part at Michael's use of the present tense.
”I have pointed out to him,” said Doyle, “that one finds the odd Jew on Wall Street. Even the odd Papist. His reply was that the Jews invented commerce but the Protestants invented greed.”
The smile flickered at the memory, then faded.
“And . . . you pushing drug company stocks. He didn't much like that either, did he.”
“There's nothing wrong with drug companies.”
“But with all the industries you might have specialized in . . .”
“Mr. Doyle, what's your point?”
The lawyer shook his head quickly. “None. None at all.”
Doyle signaled for the waiter.
Big Jake's advice, given while Fallon was in college, was to do what you love and the money will follow. Unless they won't pay you. In that case, go where the money is, make your pile, then go do something useful with the rest of your life.
Good advice. The kind uncles give. But Jake definitely hadn't meant Wall Street because Uncle Jake was not a fan of the financial community. He said that the Mafia in its best year never pulled off scams such as are concocted every day on Wall Street. Not just the savings and loan robbery either. Not just the legalized piracy of corporate raiders, throwing tens of thousands out of work to further enrich a few. He said the traffic in heroin and cocaine wouldn't exist if a bunch of rich white Protestants hadn't put up the money in the first place. He wasn't far wrong.
Eventually, Fallon did go where the money is. But he did it his own way and with a nod, he thought, to his Uncle Jake's misgivings. Almost from the beginning, he had specialized in drug companies of the legitimate kind. First as an analyst at Shearson and later as a trader with Lehman-Stone. Lehman-Stone had held positions in Merck, Pfizer, and all the major pharmaceutical giants, but mostly, of late, in European firms such as Glaxo and Germany's AdChem.
To hear his Uncle Jake talk, however, none of these companies was any great improvement over the Medellin Cartel. In fact, during that Tylenol scare a few years back, when cyanide-laced bottles were turning up on supermarket shelves, Jake said that he would not have put it past a rival drug company to have planted them.
An outrageous accusation. But Jake wouldn't back off. At the very least, he said, these companies test each other's products all the time, hoping to find some contaminant so they can blow the whistle and force a recall. Why? Because dropping a dime on a competitor can mean a windfall increase in market share and their own stock shoots up in value. For that matter, it wouldn't surprise him if some of those Wall Street bozos had planted the poisoned bottles themselves. Two or three people die, the stock drops like a stone, and they make a killing because they've been shorting it for weeks.
Fallon couldn't deny that it was possible. Absurd, unfair, and slanderous, but still remotely possible. Maybe they also killed President Kennedy. Maybe they're aliens out to control us by drugging us. It's possible, right?
It was no use trying to tell Jake how many people are alive and functioning today because of the products Michael's clients had developed. All the jobs they've created. All the grants and scholarships they've awarded. Uncle Jake didn't want to know, nor would he explain his antagonism.
But Fallon thought he knew the reason. A shrug from Moon, during that tirade of Jake's, had as much as confirmed it. It had to do with Fallon's parents. Both of them, his father in particular, had worked for a drug company that was run, almost certainly, by white-collar criminals.
Even so, thought Fallon, it was flat-out ridiculous to mention that rinky-dink operation in the same breath with the Mercks and Pfizers and AdChems of the world. For one thing, all it made were veterinary products. It was a small manufacturer/distributor named Eagle Sales, based over in New Jersey, long since out of business.
His father had been their accountant. His mother, as he recalled, had worked there first. It's where they'd met. She quit just before he was born but she would go back every now and then, filling in for vacations and the like.
The only possible connection, and the reason that Doyle was tap dancing around it, was that the owners of Eagle had skimmed the hell out of that company and his father had probably helped them do it. No one ever said so straight out but it had to have been true. That last year, after his mother left, there was just too much money, all of it cash, lying around that apartment.
So what?
Like father, like son?
Is that what Doyle was getting at?
Or does he think that going into a marginally related field was rooted, somehow, in some deep inner urge to make amends for whatever his father had done? Or maybe to succeed where his father had failed?
That was total horseshit. All of it. Doyle, in any case, did not return to that subject.
The upshot of the dinner was that Doyle would file suit but he would then lie back and wait for heads to cool. No one wants this to go to court. No one wants the SEC in this. Be patient and they'll settle.
Doyle did have one theory as to what was going on here. It had to do with corporate image. Lehman-Stone was a very conservative firm and so were its clients. But suddenly they're getting a lot of unwelcome press. Their name was mentioned, repeatedly, in the newspaper accounts of Big Jake Fallon's murder, if only in connection with Jake's adopted son and heir. Several of the stories mentioned that Big Jake's younger brother, Michael's father, had taken his own life.
Then, after Bronwyn was killed, one tabloid did a story on what amounted to the Fallon curse . . . how Big Jake's nephew seems dogged by tragedy and death. Even the burglary made the papers. To make matters worse, that same story reported that the Giordano brothers of Brooklyn had placed a bounty on whomever killed Jake. The younger Giordano, called J
ohnny G., was said to have been a boyhood friend of Michael's.
The long and the short of it, said Doyle, is that Lehman-Stone now sees that one of its traders is related to the notorious Big Jake Fallon and the infamous Giordano brothers. They decide to disassociate themselves, and fast.
“But they don't want to look like pricks, either,” said Doyle, “dumping a guy who's taken some really hard shots. They won't if they can make him look like a crook. He's Jake Fallon's nephew, right? He's Johnny G.'s pal. How straight can he be?”
“You think that's what happened?” Fallon asked.
“It's a theory.”
“Mr. Doyle . . . Bart Hobbs has lied about me. I want his ass in court.”
Outside the Algonquin, an unexpected snow had begun to coat the sidewalk. It gave Doyle another excuse to argue for that boat.
“I'm tempted to go in on one with you,” he said. “We'll find a nice island, swim in to the beach. Who knows? We might even trip over some sleeping native and he'll turn out to be Moon.”
“You still haven't heard from him either?”
“Not a word.”
“I'm worried about him.”
“You worry about yourself.” Doyle squeezed his arm and grunted. “Get back to the gym, Michael. You're letting yourself go soft.”
He squeezed him once more, this time with affection, then turned and walked off toward the cab stand at Grand Central Station.
Fallon looked for a cab of his own. He did not have high hopes. The off-duty lights of New York taxis are known to wink on at the first flake of snow. But the Sixth Avenue subway was only a block and a half away. He reached it, missed one train, and stood waiting, deep in thought, for the next.
Witnesses told of a thirty-ish male, Hispanic, smelling of alcohol, who had been dozing against a platform pillar. The train came in. The roar jarred him awake. He suddenly lurched into Michael, shoving him into the path of the oncoming train. A large black woman, God bless her, slammed a forearm across Fallon's chest and then clawed at his hair. She slowed him, almost stopped him, but one arm had flailed out and the lead car struck it. The impact snapped his arm at the wrist.
Fallon was knocked to the platform. The drunk, they said, tried to slip away. The black woman grabbed him, told him to wait for the police. He threw a punch at her. She smothered it and proceeded to slap him silly until two transit policemen arrived and, seeing a large black woman swinging a smaller white male by the hair, ordered her to let him go.
She and other witnesses tried to explain. But the cops pulied the smaller man free and threatened to arrest her. The man bolted for the stairs but another subway rider tripped him, and the woman pounced on him again. The transit cops then seized her, pulled her off, and cuffed her hands behind her back. Other riders, most of them black, tried to intervene and were threatened with arrest. The drunk, the man who caused it all, disappeared in the confusion.
Fallon knew that the woman had tried to help him, but he was too dazed, in too much pain, to make himself clear. He was taken to the emergency ward at St. Vincent's Hospital, where he spent most of the night waiting for a lull between stabbing and shooting victims so that his arm could be treated. But his head had cleared and he used the time to find out where the woman had been taken. He was reluctant to wake Brendan Doyle over a broken arm. A hospital orderly told him how to post bail, by phone and credit card, for the woman who had probably saved his life. Her name, he learned, was Lena Mayfield, forty-six, a widow. She worked part-time at four different jobs.
He called Doyle the next morning. A week later, they went to court with her. Fallon spoke before the judge, and the charges were summarily dismissed. Fallon wrote out a check and asked Mrs. Mayfield to take it. She whistled when she saw the amount but shook her head.
‘Taking money for doin' right,” she told him, “crosses out the doin' of it.”
He was determined to find some way to thank her, to at least make up for the clothing she ruined and for any lost earnings. But he didn't get the chance. New York wasn't finished with him yet.
Chapter 5
Only three days after the hearing, while his forearm was in a cast, two muggers decided that Michael looked easy.
He had gone to see a movie near Lincoln Center. The weather had turned milder and he chose to walk home. It was just after ten, not late; Columbus Avenue was well lit and he could see other people out walking. By the time he reached the mid-seventies, however, there was no one within two blocks of him except two approaching black males. They had crossed from the other side of the street and came toward him from the opposite direction.
Fallon tried to believe that they meant him no harm. They were black, but so was the woman who had saved his life. Nor did these two look especially dangerous. They were not young kids on a prowl. These two seemed close to Fallon's own age and they looked too healthy to be junkies. He'd be damned if he would cross the street like some frightened tourist from Toledo.
But as they neared, he realized that he was probably in trouble. The one on the curb side, his hair worn in dreadlocks, was looking around, glancing over his shoulder as they walked. The other, his head bald or shaven, thick mustache, would be nearer to Fallon when they passed. That one kept his eyes straight ahead, both hands in his pockets. His skin was the lighter of the two. Perhaps not a black man after all. But not Hispanic either.
The bald one, Fallon knew, would walk past and then suddenly turn. He would aim a sap or a fist at the back of Fallon's neck and then throw him to the pavement. He would ask, “You okay?” as if speaking to a fallen drunk. He would strip him of his wallet, search for any separate cash, and then look in vain for a watch. The other would be waiting, standing lookout, ready to kick him if he resisted. They would be finished and on their way within ten seconds.
Fallon didn't wait. The bald one was abreast of him when Fallon wheeled, his left arm out ready to parry, and swung the cast on his right. The bald one had indeed been turning. The rough plaster cast thudded high against his cheek. It tore the flesh open. He yelped and raised both hands to his face. The right hand held no sap or weighted glove. It held a knife. The long thin blade glistened at his ear. Fallon lashed at it with a downward backhand blow of his cast, driving it into his assailant's face. It cut him terribly. The knife slipped from wet fingers. He tried to call to his companion for help. Air and blood blew through his cheek.
The one in the dreadlocks was clawing at his belt. Fallon spun the bald one and shoved him at the other. He followed, low, and aimed the edge of his shoe at the second man's knee. The hard chopping kick tore at his tendons. Fallon heard them pop through an agonized shriek. The man was going down but a gun had appeared in his hand. A revolver. Big, heavy, chrome-plated. Fallon moved in quickly. In a single motion he jammed one shoe against the gun and raked the man's eyes with the rough edge of his cast. Another scream. With his good hand he seized the revolver, gripping the cylinder so that it couldn't be turned. He wrenched the gun free. He brought it down across the nose of the man who would have shot him and then against his collarbone. A third blow broke his jaw. He stopped when the one in dreadlocks could no longer raise his arms.
He turned to the bald one who was on his back, rolling, trying to hold his face together. As Fallon approached, this one tried to kick up at him. Fallon seized the kicking leg, placed a foot on the other, and heaved upward as if to tear the man in half. Another shriek, cut short, and then a high-pitched hooting sound. From across the avenue, a woman's voice said, ‘‘Someone call the police.”
Fallon turned the gun in his hand and cocked it. The bloody knife was at his feet. He kicked it under a parked car then stood over the one in dreadlocks. He was semiconscious, moaning. The other now mewed like a cat.
Fallon pointed the gun at the second man's leg. A voice in his mind said, Cripple them, Michael. No use doin' this twice. But the woman was still yelling and suddenly, in the distance, he saw the strobe of blue lights. Time to go, the voice told him. Just walk away slow. Fallon obey
ed. He reached the next corner and turned toward Central Park.
“Michael . . . where did you learn to do that?”
“Do what?”
“‘Hurt people.''
“Moon. Moon taught me.''
He supposed that he should have waited there. And explained what had `happened. But he'd had enough of the police. Enough of the media.
Doyle had been right about that. Fallon had, over a period of eight weeks, figured in two major homicides. He'd had microphones stuck in his face at Uncle Jake's funeral and again after Bronwyn was killed. He had managed to duck them after the subway incident but that one made the papers all the same. And they were waiting for him outside the courthouse when he appeared for Mrs. Mayfield. A reporter asked him whether he had considered that there might be a Fallon curse.
The next day, that same reporter's tabloid ran a photo it had found in its morgue. The photo was a shot of his parents' old apartment house. On it, they had traced a dotted line from a sixth floor window to the sidewalk below, showing where another Fallon had leaped to his death.
He didn't need them hearing about this new episode.
He didn't need to see his face on a television screen, an object of pity. Some street reporter wondering aloud how one man could attract so much trouble. Or how it was that he took those two so easily. Those were his main reasons for not waiting.
The Shadow Box Page 3