by Alan Glynn
Unbelievable.
It’s clearly this trial drug Vaughan is on, and something has to be done about it. So less than a minute later Howley is through to Paul Blanford and using some fairly explicit language. The CEO of Eiben-Chemcorp practically has a nervous breakdown on the other end of the line. Howley can hear him hyperventilating.
“I’m doing what I can, Craig, Jesus. What is this? Tell me what you know.”
Howley swivels in his chair. He’s not far from hyperventilating himself. “Whatever this new drug is,” he says, squeezing the receiver, “there’s someone very high profile who has access to it, okay? And they’re fairly, let’s say … volatile. So when this person eventually loses it, which they will, and it gets out that they were hopped up on your untested product, ten years ago will seem like a stroll in the fucking park, do you hear me?”
Blanford goes silent, and Howley can almost hear the cogs turning in his brain.
Who? Who?
It’s the obvious question, but Blanford won’t ask it, not here, not on the phone. It’s only a matter of time in any case. They’re talking about a drug for geriatrics, that much was established in their last conversation, so surely all it will take for Vaughan’s name to come up is one whisper from the rumor mill—one hint of erratic behavior on the old man’s part.
Howley breaks the silence. “You and Cassie are coming this evening, right? To the benefit?”
“Yeah,” Blanford says, though it’s more of a grunt.
“Okay. We’ll talk then.”
Howley hangs up. He gets out from behind his desk and walks over to the window.
He doesn’t feel like laughing exactly, but the idea that Vaughan could go to lunch with someone like Chris Beaumont and just get him to back off, and probably with nothing more than a few coded remarks—it’s really quite impressive. Like many of his contemporaries, Howley himself wields a certain degree of power and influence, but it is prosaic, featureless, a function of structure and hierarchy. This is something else entirely. This is something based on the force of personality that is almost occult and mystical. Okay, turning Chris Beaumont so easily would be a very minor manifestation of this power, but at the same time it would serve as an unwelcome reminder that it still existed.
After all these years.
Howley turns from the window and goes back to his desk.
Because his feeling is that Vaughan’s power belongs to a different era, and that these last twitches of its corpse cannot and should not be allowed to distract from Oberon business going forward.
* * *
Frank keeps the gun—along with an old pocket watch of his father’s, a couple of fountain pens, and a folder of documents and photos—in a large brown padded envelope. He keeps the envelope under his mattress. Not exactly a high-tech security system, but so what. He used to have a safe when he lived in the apartment in the city, and they had one in the Carroll Gardens house, too, one that was bolted to the floor.
And this is what he has now.
A fucking padded envelope.
He pulls it out from under the mattress and spills its contents onto the bed.
The watch, pens, and other items he ignores. They each in their way have the power to lure him into what would become a vortex of memory and emotion, especially the photos, but he can’t let himself get near any of that stuff now. He picks up the gun, turning it in his hands as he walks away from the bed. It’s a .40 caliber semiautomatic pistol, a Glock 27, Gen 3. It’s got a standard nine-round magazine in it, with a small extension to improve grip.
He’s used it at a firing range, plenty of times, but not for a few years.
He slips it into his jacket pocket.
The concealed-carry handgun of choice.
Or so he was told when he bought it.
He takes it out again and puts it on the kitchen table beside his keys.
He didn’t sleep well last night, if at all, and now he feels really tired. His head was full of the stuff he’s been reading about since he got back here on Saturday—an indiscriminate, unfiltered feed of Wikipedia entries, blog posts, PDF files, and quarterly reports. Halfway through yesterday he lost all sense of what he was doing, but he couldn’t stop, and just continued reading. By the time he lay down he knew that he’d reached saturation point. He also knew that no amount of information was going to make any difference to what he thought or to what he was going to do.
He looks over at the laptop on the couch.
Is there any point in taking it with him?
Not really.
It’s too late for all that now … checking stuff, cross-referencing, verifying. None of it made sense to him at the time anyway. He was just stalling.
He goes into the bathroom and checks himself again in the mirror. He straightens his tie. He looks respectable, as if he’s about to attend a meeting or make a presentation.
He flicks his wrist up to check the time.
10:38 A.M.
He feels like screaming.
He turns away from the mirror, leaves the bathroom, and goes into the kitchen. He gathers up his keys, and the gun, from the table and puts them into his jacket pocket.
He looks around the apartment one more time, and leaves.
It’s early in the day, and he’s got plenty of time—too much time—but he can’t stay around here, in the apartment, in West Mahopac, any longer. So he gets in the car and hits the road.
If it comes to it, he can spend the afternoon staring up at the ceiling of his room at the Bromley.
* * *
After a shower and some breakfast, Ellen opens the House of Vaughan file and picks up where she left off. She started reading it late last night, having delayed for nearly twenty-four hours, and now she really wants to finish it. As Jimmy Gilroy said the other evening, the book is succinct—just over two hundred pages—but it covers a lot of ground. Not only the story of James Vaughan himself, it’s also about his father and grandfather, and consequently could be—and probably should be—four times as long. Someday it may well be, but the brevity of this current version gives it an urgency and punch that Ellen has rarely seen in a standard biography.
But she can see where the problem might lie. While House of Vaughan possesses the energy of really good investigative journalism, that’s not what it is. It actually is history, in that it doesn’t deal with any of the shit that’s happening right now, or tell us who the James Vaughan of today is. Another aspect of the book that’s challenging, and perhaps willfully so, is that it is written in reverse. It moves backward in time, taking us from the early 2000s right back to—she thinks, she hasn’t gotten that far yet—the late 1870s. It’s as though Gilroy were hacking and chopping his way through the decades, through dense fields of inexplicable effects, looking for some ultimate and explicable cause—some original sin that would explain all the others. He clearly subscribes, at the very least, to the notion that a good understanding of the present requires a forensic dissection of the past—which is fine, but at the end of the day, unless James Vaughan himself emerges from the gray shadows of his anonymity and agrees to become a judge on American Idol, then not that many people are going to be interested in reading a book about him.
Ellen is interested, but that’s because she’s both a news junkie and a history nerd. She sees the connections to her own work and the work she did with Gilroy. She’s also fascinated to learn about Vaughan’s personal tragedies, stuff she’d never heard before—how his third wife (of six), the mother of his two children, died in a car crash thirty years ago; how his only son, an aspiring musician, died of a heroin overdose a couple of years before that; how his older brother was killed in Korea.
What surprises her, though, and what seems to be emerging as the central theme of the book, is the number of key moments in recent history where one or another of the Vaughans seemed to play a role, either at the heart of things or on the periphery, but always there, always involved, and how this recurring role, this active participation, tell
s us something about the … the secretive, conspiratorial, and frankly compromised nature of our …
She looks away from the screen.
Of our what?
She was going to use the D word, wasn’t she? Weary now, and jaded—jaded because she’s back here again, back at this point, the point she inevitably reaches with so many of the stories she covers—Ellen gets up from her desk and walks over to the window. She stands there for a while looking out onto Ninety-third Street.
These last few days her thoughts have been yo-yoing between Jimmy Gilroy and Frank Bishop, and it’s happening again now—an easy, natural transition from one to the other, only this time the contrast is sharper, and more unsettling. Jimmy has had a tough time over the last year and a half researching and writing this book. He told her the other night about some of the obstacles Vaughan’s people had put in his way, how he’d been intimidated by lawyers, hounded by private investigators, had his accounts hacked, even been physically threatened. But the fact is, no one asked him to do it, to get involved. Frank, by contrast, has had an infinitely tougher time over the last week and a half, and none of it by choice. Yet there is common ground. The two men share something.
Ellen turns and goes back to her desk. She picks up her phone.
They share an obsession—a feverish need, albeit for different reasons, to understand what it is about money and power that gnaws away at the human soul. Jimmy’s obsession is borderline, on the cusp between professional and certifiable, whereas Frank’s is over the line, no question about it.
Jimmy’s is focused. Frank’s is shapeless, directionless, and dangerous.
She gets through to his voicemail, but doesn’t leave a message.
Where did he say he was staying again? The Bromley? That’s a huge pile down on Seventh Avenue, midtown somewhere. She looks up the number.
He’s still registered at the hotel, but there’s no answer from his room.
When she gets off the phone, Ellen paces back and forth for a while, going from the window to the desk, then from the desk back to the window.
But enough.
She grabs her jacket and keys, and heads out. She flags down a cab on Columbus Avenue and within fifteen minutes is walking into the lobby of the Bromley Hotel. There is a large group of tourists, along with all of their luggage, gathered in front of a fountain in the center of it. Two of their party are at the desk engaged in some sort of negotiation, or argument even, with an attractive young receptionist in uniform. Standing behind the receptionist, also in uniform, is a slightly older guy, late thirties maybe, who seems to be observing the scene, but not participating. Ellen catches this guy’s eye and indicates to him that she wants to talk. He silently leaves his colleague and moves along the desk, past a fake marble pillar, to a quieter section at the end.
“Good morning, ma’am. Welcome to the Bromley. How may I help you today?”
“Hi, I need to speak to a guest. A Mr. Frank Bishop. I don’t know his room number.”
The receptionist smiles, does a few strokes on his keyboard, and then reaches for a phone.
Ellen knows there probably won’t be an answer, but she waits anyway.
“Ma’am, I’m afraid that Mr. Bish—”
“Yeah, I figured,” she says, interrupting him. She glances left and right, then leans in slightly. “You see, I, er … I think there might be a problem here.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Ellen lays it on fairly thick. She’s concerned about her ex-husband. Hasn’t been heard from in days. May have stopped taking his meds. The name Bishop has been hard to avoid recently, but she’s hoping, gambling on it, that the receptionist doesn’t make the connection.
He looks concerned, even slightly alarmed. He works his keyboard a little more, then makes another discreet call, turning away and speaking in a whisper. He looks back at Ellen. “Hhmm. Housekeeping hasn’t been into Mr. Bishop’s room since Friday.” He taps his fingers on the desk. “That’s not necessarily unusual, of course—”
“I know, but…” Before he starts talking about strict protocols and informing his superiors, Ellen decides to go for broke. She glances at his name tag. “Look, Luis, all I want to know is that poor Frank isn’t lying there in the bathtub with his wrists all slit open and blood everywhere, okay?”
Luis winces, and his eyes widen, but he’s still wavering.
Ellen shrugs. “How about this? I’ll give you fifty dollars. All you have to do is open the door and look in. I don’t even have to be there. I just want to know that he’s okay.”
Luis looks around. Then he looks back at Ellen and nods. Despite what she said about not having to be there, Ellen follows Luis, and he doesn’t seem to object. They take the elevator in silence. As they walk along the corridor to Frank’s room they pass an elderly Japanese couple.
At the door, which has a DO NOT DISTURB sign on it, Luis clears his throat. Then he raps on the door and says, “Management.” He does this twice more, and when there is no response he takes out a card key, and without looking back at Ellen or referring to her in any way he opens the door, steps in, and flicks on a light.
Ellen steps in behind him.
The room is a mess, but a weird mess. There are books and magazines strewn everywhere. The air is heavy, the bed is unmade, and there are some clothes lying around … but it’s mainly the books and magazines that catch the eye.
“Holy shit.”
Ellen looks up. Luis is staring at the wall-mounted plasma TV screen, which is blank but has a long crack, or gash, in it. On the floor in front of it, there is an empty vodka bottle, also cracked.
Suddenly remembering why he’s here, Luis rushes over to the bathroom, pushes the door open, and reaches for the light switch. Somehow, Ellen knows that Frank won’t be in there, and that the bathtub will be empty, so for the few seconds that she’s alone here in the main room, and not hearing any gasps of horror, she throws her eye over some of the book titles.
From what she can make out, they’re mostly what Frank said. Business books.
Money Down.
The Dominion of Debt.
Luis reappears. “Mr. Bishop isn’t here,” he says.
Ellen holds out her hand. There’s a fifty-dollar bill in it. “Thanks,” she says.
Luis swallows. “You know what?” He holds up his hands, palms outstretched. “I’m good.”
He looks pale, almost as if he has seen a bloody corpse in the bathtub.
“Take it, Luis.” She stuffs the bill into the breast pocket of his jacket. “I’m relieved he’s not in there, believe me.”
Back outside, as Luis is closing the door, Ellen hears the ping of the elevator down the hallway and turns to look.
A moment later, Frank Bishop appears.
Shit.
He walks for a few yards in their direction before he focuses and sees Ellen.
“What the—”
“Hi, Frank.”
Luis seems horrified, but also conflicted. That TV is going to have to be accounted for.
Frank shakes his head. “Were you in my fucking room just now?”
“Sir,” Luis says firmly, “please stay calm. I can explain.”
Ellen holds up a hand. “I was worried about you, Frank. You weren’t answering my calls. You haven’t been—”
“What are you, my wife?”
She avoids looking at Luis and studies Frank instead. He’s wearing a suit, and a tie. He’s clean-shaven. Has she missed something?
“Look, Frank…” she begins, but then stops. She turns to Luis. “I think we’re okay here, Luis. You know? Thank you.”
Luis hesitates. Then he addresses Frank. “There is the question of the TV, sir. I’ll have to—”
“You have my credit card number, right? Buy a new TV with it. Knock yourself out.” He pauses. “Okay?”
Luis nods. “Very well, sir. Ma’am.”
He takes off down the corridor.
Frank closes his eyes for a moment. “Ellen,
” he then says, almost a tremor in his voice, “you had no right to come snooping around here. If you want—”
“I wasn’t snooping. I told you. I was worried about you.”
“Worried about me? You don’t even know me.”
“I know you a bit. Enough to be concerned.”
“Well, don’t be.”
She nods back toward the room. “That’s quite a collection of material you have in there.”
“I told you.” He shrugs. “I’m an expert now.”
“No one’s an expert, Frank. Isn’t that part of the problem?”
“Maybe, but I’m not interested in the problem anymore. Just the solution.”
She looks at him. “And what’s that?”
He holds her gaze for a moment. “Ask my daughter.”
Ellen swallows and looks away. She wonders again about his suit, his tie, this clean-cut appearance. Maybe that’s how he usually looks. Or maybe he looks this way because he’s just come back from seeing his daughter’s body? And this intrusion, this presumption on her part, is the last thing he needs? Is that it?
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I shouldn’t have come here.”
She starts to walk away.
“Don’t worry about it, Ellen. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry, too.”
“For what?”
“I wasn’t of much use to you, was I? In the end?”
Ellen doesn’t know what he means by this—if he’s being honest, or deeply sarcastic, or if he’s just confused.
“I don’t look at it that way, Frank.” It’s the only answer she can think of.
“Well, who knows,” he says, “maybe we’ll get one last shot at it.”
He’s definitely confused.
“I wish you all the best, Frank.” She raises a hand and gives it a gentle wave. “Take care of yourself.”
On the way down in the elevator, she curses herself for getting up this morning.
* * *
Normally, Howley doesn’t mind this getting-ready period at home prior to going out. Jessica isn’t one of those obsessive, neurotic women—and Howley has known a few—who make a production number out of it, parading all their insecurities, fussing over clothes and hair, soliciting opinions and then dismissing them instantly. Jess is levelheaded, and rightly confident in her looks and how she dresses. But this evening is a little different. The Kurtzmann gala benefit is the culmination of several months’ work, and although she has an excellent staff and committee who appear to be on top of everything, Jess is understandably on edge.