The Chairman

by Stephen Frey

  He looked at her curiously. “Why do you say that?”

  “You hesitated when you answered.”

  He shook his head. “You shouldn’t read anything into that. I give every question due consideration.”

  She groaned. “Due consideration? Are you really that boring, Christian? If you are, I’m leaving. I want someone who talks to me like a real person, not somebody who sounds like the lawyers micromanaging my career.”

  “I’m thirty-six. I can’t change who I am.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  Gillette gazed at Faith over the flame of a single candle. She was blond with large green eyes and a voluptuous figure he knew had been surgically enhanced. She wasn’t classically beautiful—not like Isabelle was. Faith overpowered you with her curves and enticed you with those bedroom eyes.

  Still, it was Faith’s personality Gillette found most intriguing. She was confident but not arrogant. And she had a charisma and a passion about her that was contagious. She seemed to say whatever was on her mind—a luxury he didn’t have. What he said, he said with candor. But he didn’t say everything. He couldn’t.

  “How about when your limousine explodes?” she pushed when he didn’t answer. “Do you get tired of managing billions then?”

  He smiled for the first time. “No. I call the dealer and order a new one.”

  She laughed. “You have a wonderful smile, but you don’t show it enough.”

  “Always leave people wanting more. You know that. You’re an entertainer.”

  “Are you really that calculating?”

  He pushed his spoon around the tablecloth. “Are you really that direct?”

  “I heard you were. I thought you’d appreciate it.”

  “How exactly did you hear I was?”

  “Mutual friends.”

  “I doubt we have any mutual—”

  “Okay, I guessed,” Faith admitted. “But it seems logical. One of my assistants researched you on the Web. A man who’s chairman of so many companies, of the company that owns my record label,” she reminded him, “a man like that would have to be direct. He’d have so many demands on his time, he’d have no choice.” She paused. “But maybe a man like that doesn’t appreciate having the tables turned on him.”

  “Maybe not,” Gillette agreed coolly.

  “And maybe I’m risking my next contract.”

  “Not as long as your CDs keep selling.”

  “Oh, I see how it is.”

  “Business is business.” Gillette folded his hands in his lap. “Remind me again, Faith. How many albums have you done?”

  “Two.”

  “When did the first one come out?”

  “A little over a year ago.”

  “How many copies did it sell?”

  “Over five million.”

  No wonder so many people were begging for her autograph. “And the second one? When was it released?”

  “A few weeks ago.”

  “How’s it doing?”

  She glanced down. “Fine.”

  “Better than the first one?”

  “It’s early, you know,” she murmured. “Still early.”

  Clearly there was a problem. “Is it as good as the first one?”

  “Better,” she said firmly, her expression turning steely. “Much better.”

  “Then what’s the matter?”

  Faith shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Is the music label giving you the dollar support?” Gillette thought for a second, trying to remember if he’d seen or heard any plugs for her new album. “I’m probably not a very good measuring stick, but I don’t remember seeing or hearing anything. I’d think they’d be flogging TV and radio at this point.”

  “I don’t get into all that,” she said quietly. “I just sing.”

  “Uh-huh.” Definitely something wrong. “I’ll make a few calls and see what’s going on.”

  “Thanks,” she said softly.

  Their eyes met again and he caught appreciation in her expression. Then, what he thought was sadness.

  “So, how did you feel when your limousine exploded?” Faith asked.

  “The same way you felt when you got that letter a few weeks ago.”

  McGuire & Company handled Faith’s personal security. Yesterday morning, after going through the file he’d put together on Senator Stockman, Tom McGuire had given Gillette the Reader’s Digest version of Faith Cassidy’s life. Including a quick mention of her bra cup size going from a “B” to a full “C” after surgery six months ago.

  “What letter?” she demanded, her tone turning apprehensive.

  “The one from the wacko who’s been stalking you since your Chicago concert.”

  “How do you know about—”

  “I just do, Faith.” She had no idea that Everest Capital owned McGuire & Company. It was the only portfolio company not mentioned on the Everest website. For good reason. It didn’t make sense to advertise to the outside world that Everest spied on people. “I have access to a lot of information.”

  “Obviously.” She nodded at his unused wineglass. “Is it what you do that keeps you from having a glass of wine? Do you always have to be in complete control of everything? Including yourself?”

  “No.” A lie.

  “What is it, then?”

  His first instinct was to say nothing, but he understood the power of pulling the curtain back on a fragment of his life. People felt like you were allowing them inside. Even if it was just for a few minutes, they appreciated it. Sometimes to the point where they felt like they owed you something.

  His gaze moved slowly down over her breasts—barely covered by a sheer midriff top—to a diamond dangling from a gold belly ring.

  “My mother was an alcoholic,” he finally said, glancing away. “She drank too many martinis one day and dove into the pool. My father found her on the bottom that night when he got home.”

  Faith brought her hands to her mouth. “She hit her head when she dove in, didn’t she?”

  “It’s more complicated than that. You see, she couldn’t swim. She hated the water. Before that day she’d never been in the pool, not even up to her ankles.” Gillette picked up his glass of water and took a sip. “The coroner put the time of death at three that afternoon, but she’d turned on the pool light beneath the diving board.”

  “Why?”

  “So my father would see her as soon as he got home. It was suicide.”

  Faith shook her head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pressed.”

  “That’s why I don’t drink, Faith. I can’t risk outside influences like that clouding my judgment.” Gillette hesitated. “You were right. I do have to be in control of myself. I have too many decisions to make all the time. Sometimes it seems like I have to make one every minute.”

  “Does the pressure ever get to you?”

  “No,” he answered firmly. “I can’t allow that.”

  “What exactly do you do?” she asked. “Your messenger tried explaining it to me at the reception, but all I picked up was that you control a lot of money and you’re chairman of quite a few companies. Including Everest, now.”

  “Was it that obvious I sent Ben Cohen?”

  “Yes, but he wasn’t the first front man to come up to me. Senator Stockman sent his guy, and so did that football player. What’s his name? Jeremy something.”

  Gillette glanced over the flame again. “Jeremy Cole?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. I’m supposed to see him later this week.”

  Gillette felt his pulse jump. A competitive combustion fueled by some basic instinct deep inside.

  “Does that bother you?” Faith asked, grinning.

  “Does what bother me?”

  “That I’m going to see Jeremy Cole.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Sure,” she said sarcastically, leaning back in her chair and smoothing the napkin in her lap. “So, tell me what you do.”

  “We buy companies,” h
e explained, glancing at the diamond bellybutton ring sparkling in the candlelight. “After we buy them, we grow them. A few years later we sell them. And we usually sell them for more than what we paid.”

  “You must be very rich.”

  “I don’t worry about making the monthly mortgage payment.”

  “You probably don’t even have a mortgage.” She hesitated. “Have you always been rich?”

  “Meaning?”

  “Is your father wealthy?”

  “My father died when I was twenty-two. The summer after I graduated from college.”

  Gillette had been motorcycling cross-country when he’d gotten the news about his father. Killed in a private plane crash at the Orange County airport. On takeoff. It had been a clear day with no wind and, after fourteen years, Gillette still didn’t buy the official “pilot error” explanation. There were rumors about what had really happened, but everything he’d ever investigated had led to a dead end. Even Tom McGuire had come up empty-handed.

  Faith put her elbows on the table and held her head in her hands. “I keep asking the wrong question, don’t I?”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “I’m still sorry.”

  “Thanks.” Gillette cleared his throat. “I was very proud of my father. He was a hell of a man. He started a Los Angeles investment bank in his early thirties, and sold it ten years later to one of the big New York firms for a hundred million. Then he went into politics. He was a United States senator when he was killed in a plane crash.”

  “Wow. I guess I should have known all that, but I’m not really into politics.”

  “And you’re from the East,” he pointed out. “Probably more relevant, you were twelve years old at the time.”

  Faith raised both eyebrows. “You certainly know a lot about me.”

  “Having information is the key to success in my business. The key to success in anything, really. Without it you’re like every other jerk out there who’s just hoping for good luck.” He thought about Tom McGuire for a moment. How McGuire gave him that advantage. “Fortunately, I have people working for me who are good at getting information.”

  “Is it hard having a father who was so successful?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you feel like you have to live up to what he accomplished?”

  Gillette thought about the question. He’d never had anything but support from his father. He’d never felt envy or jealousy, never been pressured. “No.” He would have put the question right back to her, but, thanks to McGuire, he knew she’d grown up poor in rural Kentucky. She was completely self-made.

  “So, you’ve always had money,” Faith said wistfully. “That must be nice.”

  He stared at her hard. He’d pulled the curtain back enough. There was no reason to let her in on what it was like to be cut off at the knees by someone who owed him so much.

  “What do you do with it all?” she asked.

  He gave her a curious look. People he dealt with either understood what he did with his money or were afraid to ask. “I invest.”

  “If you already have so much, why work so hard to make more? Why be chairman of all those companies and have to deal with a mountain of stress?”

  She didn’t understand that everything he had—his net worth was more than $70 million—he’d made on his own. That he was constantly driven to make more because you never knew what could happen. You never knew who was going to try to screw you and take what you had. But he wasn’t going to tell her all that because then he’d have to explain why he was such a hard man. “It’s what I do,” he answered quietly.

  “But for what purpose?” she pushed.

  “Purpose?”

  “What’s the point? I mean, do you work that hard so you can buy houses and planes and cars and boats that you’ll never use? Or is there more to it than that? Something deeper.”

  “I give a lot to charities, if that’s where you’re headed with this.”

  “Do you give to those charities just for appearance, or for real?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Do you give to those charities because you think The New York Times might call you out if you didn’t? Because it would be an embarrassment to Everest Capital if its chairman wasn’t socially responsible,” Faith continued, making quotation marks with her fingers. “Because your investors and your competitors might figure Everest wasn’t doing well if the chairman of the firm didn’t give to charities. Or do you do it without an agenda? Is it purely a selfless act without any expectation of a benefit to you? Without any of that calculation you seem to be so good at?”

  “There’s no such thing as a selfless act.”

  She groaned. “Oh, God.”

  “Look, there’s always a benefit. Nothing’s pure. Maybe the act just makes the person who does it feel good, but that’s a benefit. Think about it.”

  “I have.”

  “And?”

  “And I believe there are definitely people who give and don’t ask for or get anything in return.”

  Gillette shook his head. “This is like arguing about the sex of angels.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means there isn’t a right answer.”

  She laughed. “Maybe they’re both sexes. Angels, I mean.”

  Gillette rolled his eyes. “Look, the bottom line is you have your view, I have mine, and neither one of us is going to change the other’s mind.”

  “Normally, I’d agree with you. But I might make an exception. At least, temporarily.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re very attractive, and not just physically. You’re . . . precocious. I like that in a man.”

  “Precocious. That’s a big word.”

  “Hey, I may not write all the lines, but I don’t sing a syllable until I know what every word means.”

  It was Gillette’s turn to smile.

  “I know one thing,” she continued. “You could be an angel.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “I’m serious. You put up this tough veneer, but underneath you’re a very caring person.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Yes, I do,” she replied firmly, leaning across the table and entwining her fingers in his. “I have good instincts that way.”

  He looked down at her hand, aroused by the softness of her skin.

  “Don’t just give money, Christian. Get down in the trenches. Get involved at the grassroots level. You’re so charismatic. You could make such a difference.”

  Gillette stared at her over the flame, tempted to tell her about Jose and Alex. Then he spotted another young man headed toward the table clutching a napkin and a pen. He gestured to a bodyguard standing against the wall a few feet away, who quickly intercepted the fan. When the young man had been escorted away, he turned back to her. “Tell me about yourself, Faith. Where did you grow up?”

  “If you know about that stalker letter,” she said, pulling her hand from his, “I’m sure you know where I grew up.”

  So, she was smart, too. Which was good. He far preferred a challenge than a pushover. “Fair enough. So, tell me something I don’t know.”

  She finished what was left in her glass. “I’m a twenty-six-year-old pop singer.”

  “I’d know that by—”

  “And, since I was a teenager, I’ve been too busy with my career to ever have a real romance.” Faith gazed into his eyes. “But I think I might finally be ready.” She gave him a determined look. “Now it’s your turn. Tell me something about you.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like what do you do for fun?”

  Typically, he would have sidestepped the question, but he was tempted to answer. Maybe because she was one of those creative types he rarely got to spend any time with but found so compelling, or because he wanted her to be interested in him. At least, tonight. “The other night I won five grand shooting pool out in Bed-Stuy.”

  Faith gi
ggled and waved. “Sure you did.”

  “Seriously. I’m not too bad.”

  “Uh-huh. Where do you play?”

  “Places in the Bronx and Brooklyn where there’s real talent.”

  “Do you take a posse for protection?”

  “No. I go by myself.”

  Faith shook her head. “Do you really expect me to believe that?”

  “Believe what you want.”

  “Give me a break, Christian. Win or lose, you wouldn’t make it out of those places alive. Come on, tell me something else. Something I can believe.”

  “Something else,” he repeated. “Like—”

  “Like, do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  He hesitated, glancing away after a few moments.

  “Christian.”

  “No, I’m an only child.”

  “Oh. Well, how about this? Tell me something you believe in.”

  “Something I believe in?”

  “Yeah. Something that guides your life. A principle.”

  Gillette thought for a few seconds. “Okay, I don’t really trust anyone.”

  She looked up, the smile on her face disappearing. “Why?”

  “Because sooner or later, everyone will let you down.”

  Jose and Alex stood on the deck of Jose’s home, gazing through the gloom at the house that would be Alex’s.

  As instructed, Jose had walked across the lawns separating the homes at nine o’clock this morning and bid $500 thousand dollars—thirty thousand more than the listed price. The professor had laughed callously at the offer, assuming Jose had no way of paying for another house in the neighborhood. So Jose had turned around and walked back home.

  Ten minutes later the man was on Jose’s doorstep, out of breath. Apologizing profusely for his insolence. He’d called the bank officer Jose had given as a reference and found out that Jose could pay cash.

  Alex’s chin fell slowly to his chest, and he rubbed his eyes to wipe away the moisture. “I’m going to be able to give my children a nice home, hermano,” he whispered. “I’m going to be able to give them a real chance at life.”

  Jose put an arm around his brother’s shoulder. “I know, Al. I say the same thing to myself every day.”

  “This is beautiful, Christian.” Faith stood beside Gillette on the balcony of his duplex apartment overlooking Central Park. The lights of the West Side shone brightly in the distance. “Really.”