by Alan Glynn
America going, “Hey Nineteen.”
Skate a little lower now.
Frank’s heart bursting and ripping itself into bloody shreds inside his chest.
Then, by eight o’clock, on discussion panels all across the networks, professors of behavioral psychology were name-checking Patty Hearst and wondering if this mightn’t be another classic case of Stockholm syndrome. Deb was distraught at the very idea, as it seemed to bring home to her just what a circus the whole thing had become. She’d been fairly composed for most of the night and had spent a lot of it on the phone to her second husband, Lloyd, either out at the barrier or sitting in one of the NYPD trailers. She and Frank had been civil at first, united in their horror at what was happening, but they’d pretty quickly run out of things to say to each other. By morning, a combination of sheer physical exhaustion and the weirdness of this enforced proximity had led to a palpable tension between them, with contact soon limited to the occasional wordless look or cryptic shrug.
Now, just before ten o’clock, that tension escalates in a way that catches Frank off guard. Deb emerges from one of the trailers and comes toward him with her BlackBerry held up.
She looks great, as usual, elegantly dressed and with that commanding, lawyerly presence. She walks right up to him and waves the BlackBerry in his face. “You weren’t going to tell me?”
“What?”
But he knows. Fuck. Winterbrook Mall. It seems like a thousand centuries ago.
“You lost your job? You got fired? From a Paloma store? Because you couldn’t keep your mouth shut?”
“But—”
“And now it’s all over the Internet?” She waves the BlackBerry in his face again. “On Gawker? ‘Like Father, Like Daughter? Does This Man Need Anger Management Classes?’ Jesus, Frank.”
He wilts.
Frank hadn’t mentioned anything because … why the fuck would he? The focus was on Lizzie, as it should have been. He and Deb were here for her, not to exchange pleasantries or career updates.
But this is being willfully naive, and he knows it. Exposure of some kind was inevitable. In fact, Deb is being naive if she thinks they won’t go after her, too. No one controls this stuff, isn’t that what Ellen Dorsey had said?
“It’s my business, Deb, mine only. I can’t help it if these bastards have no scruples.”
“Well, have you talked to anyone else?”
“What do you mean? I haven’t talked to anyone at all. Certainly not to anyone at Gawker. They’re the ones who probably talked to someone at Paloma, or at the mall. And don’t think they won’t be sniffing around up at Pierson Hackler either.”
Deb’s law firm.
She stares at him, and he sees a crack. “We’ve had a few calls,” she says, “from … the cable news shows, looking for an interview … just something short.” She pauses. “Lloyd thinks we should do it.”
Lloyd.
He’s a lawyer, too, of course.
Then Frank suddenly leans in toward her. “We? You mean us, right?”
Deb falters, and he sees it coming. “No, Frank,” she says, “I don’t. I mean me and Lloyd.”
* * *
Lizzie isn’t sure, but she thinks Julian might be dead. Either that or he’s slipped into a convenient coma. He’s over in the corner, on the floor, curled up in a fetal position, not moving or making any sound.
Alex is on the couch, staring blankly at the blank TV screen.
Lizzie is at the table, an open book in front of her that she’s no longer even pretending to read.
Between the three of them they’ve drunk all the coffee in the apartment. They’ve eaten a pack of rice cakes, a bag of sunflower seeds, some cold cuts, a chunk of Swiss cheese, a few apples, and two bananas.
They’ve each used the bathroom at least twice.
They’ve each come close to having full-blown psychotic episodes—though Lizzie sort of felt she was faking hers, that hers was more an attempt to make Alex feel better about his. Julian’s, on the other hand, was the real deal, hysteria uncoiling slowly down to virtual catatonia—and unless something happens soon, they may have to unload him.
On medical grounds.
Which would make things a little easier for her. Relatively speaking. But it’s been nearly eighteen hours already, so surely something will have to happen soon anyway?
The police, the FBI, whoever is in control of operations—they’re clearly playing a long game here. From what they said on the phone earlier, Lizzie understood that they’re waiting for an uncle of Alex and Julian’s to show up from Florida, that they think this guy’s presence will shift the dynamic sufficiently to break the impasse. Though she also got the impression that her taking the call was something of a surprise to them.
Maybe they’d been assuming she was a hostage.
Not anymore.
The thing is, when it came to it, Alex just froze. It was really early, just before five, dawn breaking. The phone rang, and he picked it up, but then he held it out in front of him, as though he didn’t know what it was for. After a few agonizing seconds, Lizzie grabbed it from his hand, simultaneously reaching over to the table to pick up the list of demands they’d compiled.
“Hello?”
There was a pause. Then, “Good morning. Who’s this? Lizzie? Is that Lizzie I’m talking to?”
“Yes.”
“Hi. I’m Special Agent Tom Bale. Listen, Lizzie, is everything alright in there? How are the guys doing? You got enough water? Have you had something to eat?”
Soothing, eminently reasonable, all-things-are-possible negotiator voice.
“We’re all doing fine,” Lizzie said. “Feeling a bit cut off maybe, communications-wise.”
It turned out that they did have electricity in the apartment, but the TV and Internet connections had been blocked.
“Well, you know how it is, Lizzie. These are standard procedures. But let me see what I can do, okay? It’s just that … I mean, the thing is … we’re all naturally a little concerned out here, considering what Alex said and all, at the outset of this thing. He was very clearly distressed, we understand that—but we’re not sure if … you know…”
Never having undergone this process before, Lizzie found it surprising how transparent and predictable it seemed. She knew exactly what Special Agent Bale was up to and didn’t even have to think about how to respond.
“Well,” she whispered, “you heard what he said, the word he used, right? It was pretty unambiguous.”
She left it at that.
It was then that Bale mentioned the uncle who was supposed to be on his way up from Florida. Lizzie didn’t react. Though she did wonder, and not for the first time, about her own folks. Were they here? Standing outside the building? Next to each other? She found that thought a little disquieting and decided to get on with the business at hand.
“We have a list,” she said. “These are the things that we want.”
“Lizzie, that’s great, it is, but I must—”
“Just shut up, okay? And listen.”
Micro beat.
“You got it.”
Then she started reeling them off. Nothing about food here, or tampons, or money, or safe passage out of the building—these were hard-core political demands.
“… end the carried-interest tax break for hedge fund managers … reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act … impose a zero-point-one percent tax on all trades of stocks, bonds, and derivatives…”
And as she read these out—her eyes darting from the page to Alex, then back to the page again—Lizzie felt the peculiar, transgressive thrill of knowing that while she sounded in control here, the truth was she barely understood a word of what she was saying. She had some knowledge of this stuff, from listening to Alex over the months, but she was extremely vague on the specifics.
“… mandate a new separation of the banks into investment and commercial by repealing Gramm-Leach-Bliley…”
So once she got off the phone—having lob
bed the ball firmly into the FBI’s court—she decided it was time to get with the program and just bone up on the specifics. Energized, she gathered a few of the books and papers Julian had lying around the apartment, spread them out on the table, and started reading.
This was important.
That’s what she told herself.
There was a whole language here she needed to learn, a language that both she and Alex, when they found themselves caught up—as they soon would, make no mistake—in the flaming crucible of global media attention, could use to …
To what? To what?
Looking back now, a few hours later, she can see that that was the high point—before, during, and immediately after the phone conversation with the FBI guy. It was the high point in terms of energy levels and enthusiasm, the high point in terms of being in love with Alex, of being exquisitely deluded, of being in the throes of a mindless, giddy, tingly, bring-it-on, romantic death wish, whatever … that was the fucking crucible right there.
But it didn’t last, it couldn’t, and after half an hour or so of reading about fiat currencies and the gold standard, the air went out of it all.
Literal deflation.
She persevered, but there wasn’t much point, and the next few hours were like the comedown from an acid trip—or, at least, never having done acid, what she imagined that would be like.
The mention of a Coady uncle didn’t help matters. As far as Julian and Alex were concerned, the prospect of this man maybe standing down on Orchard Street with a bullhorn and saying things certainly seemed to put a dampener on the proceedings, and might have even been the catalyst for each of their subsequent “episodes.”
In any case, Friday morning lurching toward its midpoint, here they are, the three of them, one slumped in a chair, one on the couch, one on the floor.
All waiting.
But for what? The Internet connection to boot back up? Some cable news channel to come on the TV (with an update on the Carillo trial)? An amplified voice from outside to start pleading with them to surrender? The door to be kicked in, followed by the blinding, deafening flash of an M84 stun grenade?
This all feels a lot smaller than it did before—the possible outcomes more limited, the future more boxed in.
It’s the new torpor, and Lizzie doesn’t like it one little bit.
She looks at the guys and wants to scream at them.
But the thing is, what would she say?
* * *
The media conference is being held in the Amontillado Suite at the Wilson Hotel on Madison Avenue.
Announced at such short notice, and considering what else is going on in the city, it’ll be a low-key enough affair, but that’s fine. The event will be reported, recorded, live-streamed, and blogged. The message will get out, and there’ll be plenty of opportunity for follow-up. Howley will read his prepared statement, introduce his new COO/head of global infrastructure, and then answer a few questions.
And that’ll be that.
The takeaway here—he hopes—will be the phrase “effective immediately.”
Everything else will be noise and interference.
And heading up to the Wilson now for a midday kickoff, Howley pretty much knows what kind of noise and interference to expect. The more seasoned business hacks—the ones with a genuine sense of history—will want at least some return on the Vaughan angle. How is the old man? Where is he? What are his plans? Others will be focusing more on the succession process, and others again, predictably, will be fishing for any hint of an IPO announcement.
The succession narrative is fairly well established by this stage. For several years, whenever the subject came up, the names of a few high-profile contenders from within the company would be trotted out, but then Vaughan took the decisive step of bringing in an outsider as his new COO, a move widely seen as an unequivocal appoint-and-anoint. It was designed to end the speculation—that much is clear—but it also had the effect of emphasizing just what a one-man show the Oberon Capital Group really was.
Today’s announcement will bring an end to all of that.
As for an IPO, Howley intends to put that issue to bed next week, on Thursday or Friday, when he appears on Bloomberg to do an in-depth interview.
The final arrangements have yet to be made.
Approaching Seventy-first Street now, Howley leans back in his seat and takes a deep breath.
This is the big one, the pinnacle of his career.
Five or six years at the helm of Oberon and he can think about retiring. It’s incredible. Only seems like yesterday that he was moving to D.C. to work as a consultant at the Defense Department.
The car pulls up outside the hotel. Howley gets out, and as he’s standing there on the sidewalk he feels his phone vibrating in his pocket.
He pulls it out and looks at the display.
Vaughan.
He’s been expecting this. They went over the statement very briefly last night and everything was in order, but it was a business call and neither of them made any reference whatsoever to the significance of what was being set in train here. Howley is no sentimentalist, but he has a strong sense of occasion and would like to see this particular one marked in some way.
Or at the very least acknowledged.
He understands that Vaughan probably has mixed feelings, as well as a degree of trepidation about the publicity side of things—but on that score, just as Howley predicted, all eyes this morning are on Orchard Street.
On this Lizzie Bishop.
Whose fifteen-minute allotment of fame, as far as Vaughan is concerned, has come at just the right time.
Glancing around at sunny Madison Avenue, Howley raises the phone to his ear. “Jimmy?”
“Craig, how are you? Listen, meant to say last night, I’m thinking of heading out of town for a while, give you a little breathing space.”
“No, no, Jimmy, come on, that’s not necessary, you don’t have to—”
“No, I don’t. But I might anyway. Spend a little time at the house in Palm Beach. Relax, do a bit of sailing—”
Sailing?
“—play some golf. That’d be the real reason, if you want to know the truth.”
“Would you…” Howley doesn’t know how to phrase this. The Jimmy Vaughan he saw earlier in the week was a very sick man. “Would you…”
“Would I be able to, you mean? Well, listen, this new medication I’m on—the one I told you about, that the boys at Eiben are working on?—it’s amazing. It’s finally kicking in, and I actually feel pretty good for a change.”
“Holy shit, Jimmy.” Howley isn’t sure what to make of this. But one thing does occur to him. The boys at Eiben? Isn’t that a little weird? Given the history, given—
Then he sees Dave Fishman, Oberon’s director of corporate affairs, coming through the hotel’s revolving doors, and he gets distracted. “Er … that’s great, it really is…”
“Don’t worry, Craig,” Vaughan says. “I’m still going to die.”
“Jesus, Jimmy.”
“No, I just mean I mightn’t have such a miserable time doing it.”
As Fishman approaches, eyebrows raised, pointing at his watch, Howley feels a flicker of panic, of uncertainty. It’s as though he has lost his bearings all of a sudden. “Er, listen, Jimmy,” he says, “I have to—”
“Go, go, you’re fine.” That was whispered. But what Vaughan says next is much louder. “You know what, I might just stick around. This could be interesting.”
“Good … yeah, okay.”
“And Craig?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t fuck this up on me, you hear?”
* * *
It’s nearly one o’clock, and Frank has an uneasy sense that something is under way. But he has no idea what it is and no one will talk to him.
There’s a lot of coming and going, a lot of huddled, urgent-looking conversations taking place between busy, important-looking people.
He keeps glancing
around to see if he can spot that detective he spoke to a few times during the night. What was his name? Lenny Byron. There was a man you could deal with—open, direct, reluctant to just peddle any old line from the department.
But Detective Byron doesn’t seem to be here anymore.
It’s not that no one will talk to Frank—there are liaison officers and trauma counselors and all kinds of spokespeople available and willing to talk to him, but what they really are is a sort of buffer zone.
Right now he wants to talk to the important-looking people.
Because he has his suspicions.
Gleaned from various conversations and from things he’s overheard.
For instance, it’s Frank’s understanding that there is considerable FBI skepticism about the explosives. Apparently, what led them to the apartment in the first place was a tip-off from an informant inside the protest movement regarding a firearms trail. All they had was a search warrant for this address. They had no idea what they were stumbling upon, and it was only the simultaneous tip-off from Ellen Dorsey that enabled them to get on top of things so fast.
But a subsequent trawl of their intelligence has turned up nothing that would indicate any explosives capability on the part of the Coady brothers.
What worries Frank is that if the FBI and JTTF think the explosives claim is a bluff, then they might do something reckless.
His second suspicion about what might be going on has to do with this much-rumored uncle who is supposed to be arriving from Florida. First, if it’s true, then where the fuck is he? It’s been over twenty hours already since this thing started, and last time Frank looked Florida was about a three-hour plane ride away, not nestled somewhere between Australia and New Zealand. And second, there seems to be a serious disagreement about the advisability of using this guy even if he does arrive—it has to do with some bullshit psych assessment of the family dynamics.
Frank’s third suspicion arises from that conversation he had this morning with Deb. She wouldn’t say anything more about it, wouldn’t elaborate or confirm, but the idea seemed to be that she and her husband—fucking Lloyd Hackler—would go on TV and talk about the situation.