“All right, all right,” Rosanne said, sitting back down into her chair.
“Okay,” he said, reaching for the manila folder. He opened it and a little coffee trickled out of it. “Lanie,” he barked into the intercom. A young girl appeared. “Take this and wipe the papers off and Xerox them, will you?”
The girl screwed up her face and took the folder from him.”Okay, Mrs. DiSantos,” he said, “you’ll have to appear in family court for the preliminary hearing.”
“I don’t—”
“Listen to me,” he said, leaning forward on his desk. Too late. He looked under the sleeves of his jacket and sighed. He sat back in his chair. “What you say at this hearing is going to be very, very important. You’re going to need a lawyer—a good one—and you’re going to have to present your side to the judge in a way that discredits every point that has been made in the petition. Or at least prove that what has gone on in the past is no longer true about the present. Or future.” He sighed. “You can’t let it get to court or—”
“Or what?”
“Or it could take months to settle, maybe as long as a year, and until it’s settled, Jason would stay with the Rubinowitzes.”
“Oh, God,” Rosanne said, dropping her face into her hands. “I just don’t understand—he’s my son.” Mr. Jones sighed again. Then he got up and offered a box of Kleenex to Rosanne.
“Thanks,” she managed to say, fumbling for some tissues.
“I know how painful this is, Mrs. DiSantos,” Mr. Jones said, moving back to his chair. “But we have to go over the points of the petition. If you want,” he said, sitting down and slapping his hands on the arms of it, “I can get a lawyer from Legal Aid to sit in—”
Rosanne blew her nose. “I have to think about it,” she said. “Can I have a day at least?”
Mr. Jones cocked his head to consider this. “Yes. But you have to understand, Mrs. DiSantos, you don’t have long to prepare. I strongly advise you to consult a lawyer as soon as possible.”
“Yes,” she sighed, head hanging.
“Look. This is the situation as it now stands. The Rubinowitzes have had the child for almost two and a half years-half of the child’s life. And now that you’ve requested to regain custody of the child, they have petitioned the court, claiming they can provide a better home for the child than the mother—than you can, Mrs. DiSantos.”
“But how can they say that?” Rosanne cried, leaping from her chair. “I’m Jason’s mother!” she yelled, slamming her hand down on Mr. Jones’s desk. “Just because I’m not rich means I can’t have my child? Get them another kid! Why do they have to take my child?” She slammed the desk again. “It’s not fair!”
Mr. Jones’s face expressed sympathetic pain. “I want to try and help you,” he said quietly. “Please, please sit down and listen. There’s nothing you can do until you understand what you’re up against. So please, Mrs. DiSantos...”
Rosanne clutched at herself and whirled around. After a moment her shoulders eased slightly, she took a deep breath and then sat down in the chair, still holding herself tightly. “You’ve got to help me, Mr. Jones,” she said in a half whisper. “You know me. You know Jason. You know that he’s all I’ve got.” She closed her eyes, tears forcing themselves out and down her face.
There was a brief knock and Lanie came back in with the papers. “Thanks,” Mr. Jones said, examining fresh copies in a fresh folder. He cleared his throat, glanced over at Rosanne—whose eyes were still closed and turned another page. “There are two major points in the petition. The first concerns why you placed Jason in a foster home in the first place, the facts concerning your husband—”
“My husband was sick,” Rosanne said, opening her eyes. “Dr. Karrel at St. Luke’s Hospital will explain.” When Mr. Jones didn’t say anything, Rosanne added, “I couldn’t leave him when he was sick, Mr. Jones. And I put Jason in a foster home because—because—I’m a good mother, Mr. Jones. Until Frank got well, I didn’t want Jason to...” She looked to the ceiling for a moment to compose herself. She crossed her legs and began rocking slightly. Finally, “I did everything by the book. I told them the truth, I made sure Jason had a good home, I tried to help my husband get well. He’s dead now and everything’s different. Jason belongs with me now.”
“But you see, Mrs. DiSantos, the Rubinowitzes have come to love the child too—”
“Jason,” Rosanne said.
“What?”
“Please stop callin’ him ‘the child.’ “
“Okay.” Mr. Jones tried to regroup his thoughts. “Let’s get to the actual points of the petition. Okay. One. For the last three years, you and your husband apparently had no means of employment.”
“That’s not true,” Rosanne said, leaning forward. “I’ve worked almost every day of my life—I make two-fifty a week—”
Mr. Jones frowned. “But, Mrs. DiSantos, there is no record of employment.”
“But there—” Rosanne stopped herself. She bit her lip. “What kind of record do you need?”
“Well, let’s see.... According to this, neither you nor your husband have paid any taxes—federal, state or city—nor have you paid any Social Security for”—he paused, thumbing through the papers—”four years.” He looked up. “To all intents and purposes, you’ve had no means of employment, or any visible means of support. And considering the nature of your husband’s illness, as you call it, the court is very likely to assume that you may have engaged in illegal activity—”
“I clean houses, Mr. Jones. I’ve been cleanin’ houses for over three years. I’ve paid our rent, I’ve paid for our food, our clothes—I’ve bought all of Jason’s clothes and I gave the Rubinowitzes a hundred and twenty dollars every month—and I didn’t have to. They got money for being foster parents—”
“But the fact remains, Mrs. DiSantos,” he sighed, “you’ve been earning money under the table.”
Rosanne didn’t say anything.
“I see.” Mr. Jones mulled over this confession. “Well, there’s a good side and a bad side to this. On one hand, we can prove that you’ve been the breadwinner of the family, have diligently and responsibly supported yourself and your husband—do you think you can get character references from your employers?”
She nodded.
“Good. You’ll need them.” He made a note in his folder. “Now, the problem is, this same information, when revealed, will set you up to be prosecuted for tax evasion.” He looked at her. “Your employers as well.”
“My employers?”
“They should have been paying Social Security for you out of your salary.”
“Oh.” Rosanne sighed. She sighed again. “So what can I do?”
He leaned back in his chair, nibbling on his pencil. “I think the best course for you to take is to find out how much you owe in taxes and make arrangements to pay them—before the hearing. Then at least you can tell the truth and demonstrate a sense of responsibility.”
Rosanne shook her head. “Where am I gonna get the money? I only have about two thousand saved up and I need that money to—”
“Well, that brings us to point two. They claim you cannot provide an adequate home environment for the child—for Jason.”
“Well—” Rosanne said, her frustration starting to choke her. “I was lookin’ for a new apartment—a nice one-bedroom in Brooklyn—but I won’t have deposit money if I have to pay those taxes—and now you say they’re gonna take out taxes and Social Security from what I make and so I won’t have...” Her face caught in silent agony. “Oh, God,” she finally sobbed, collapsing into her lap.
“We can file for family housing—
“I did,” was Rosanne’s muffled cry. “The waiting list’s two to five years.”
Mr. Jones didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t say anything. He tapped the folder against the desk and watched Mrs. DiSantos cry.
25
SAM ASKS FOR HELP
Sam had to do something. He had known t
hat all along, of course, but now he had no choice. The ZT 5000 mess was creeping into the Wyatts’ family life in such a way that Sam knew, if he refused to act much longer, he might lose not only his career, his reputation and his self-respect but Harriet as well. At least her trust—which, in Sam’s mind, was as good as losing her altogether. Sam and Harriet had driven Samantha up to Camp Wyononi in New Hampshire over the weekend. The drive up had been fine; Samantha, in her usual buoyancy, had chattered and sung her head off for the first four hours and then had gone to sleep in the back of the station wagon, nestled in her baggage for a month-long stay. Harriet had spent the quiet time writing marketing plans.
“You know, Sam,” Harriet said, “that ZT machine is really wonderful.” (Sam had had a working model installed at Gardiner & Grayson, an arrangement he had made long before the trouble started.) “The kids in promotion are having a ball with it. When that review of the Klendon novel appeared in the Times, within an hour they were sending out blowups to our major accounts to use for point-of-sales.”
Sam missed their exit.
They had made the obligatory tour of the camp (“Honey,” Harriet whispered, leaning on Sam’s arm by the lake, “I think we need to go to camp”); Samantha had only cried for five minutes when they were leaving (as opposed to the year before, when she had to be pried loose from Harriet and forcibly dragged away); and they checked in for the night at an inn a mile down the road.
The Wyatts had eaten a delicious dinner, had strolled down a country lane in the moonlight; they had kissed for a long while by a pond (until the insects got them), and had walked, hand in hand, back to their room. And then, after an hour of trying, Sam had thrown himself out of bed in frustration and self-disgust.
“Sam, come back,” Harriet whispered. “Please just come back and hold me.”
Sam got dressed and went out for a walk. When he came back, he found weeping in the bed. He felt as guilty and awful as he had in the old days; it was as if he was returning, still warm, from another woman’s bed. There was no other woman—but there was guilt. He had tried to comfort Harriet, but his heart was simply not in it. All he could think about was what Harriet would think if she knew the truth about the mess he was in. Sam Wyatt, executive extraordinaire—business friend to South Africa! And still he had done nothing.
The drive home Sunday had been even worse. Harriet was silent and every time Sam looked at her he saw an expression resurrected from the long-ago past—an expression of pain, of fear, of helplessness. And it killed Sam to see it.
When they arrived home, Althea reported that Charles Washington had called Sam about the business seminar Sam ran every year for the Urban League. Sam called Charles back—from the bedroom—and said he was terribly sorry but Charles would have to find someone else to run it this year.
When Sam finally succeeded in getting Charles off the phone, he went into the kitchen, only to find Harriet with that expression on her face again.
“Why are you looking at me that way?”
Harriet had not answered; she had turned away from him to start fixing dinner. That, too, was behavior from years long gone by. The Silent Treatment.
Althea had come into the kitchen at that moment, eating sunflower seeds, one by one, out of the palm of her hand. “So why aren’t you doing the seminar, Dad? John signed up this year—at my suggestion.” Munch, munch. “What am I supposed to tell him?”
“What, are you eavesdropping now, Althea?” Sam said.
“Your voice isn’t exactly quiet, you know.”
Harriet glanced back at Sam over her shoulder.
“Tell John—whoever the hell that is—that your father’s busy,” Sam said, walking out.
On Monday night Sam took Cassy Cochran to an alcoholism treatment center on West 59th Street to sit in on a group therapy session for the spouses of alcoholics. Although Harriet had offered to take her, Cassy said that it would be better if Sam did. (“You’re too gentle, Harriet,” she had said in front of both them the week before. “I’d be sure to cancel. But I wouldn’t dare cancel on Sam—I’d be too scared to.”) Afterward, they walked all the way home, with Cassy talking the entire way about Michael. When they reached the Cochrans’ building, Cassy hugged Sam and said she didn’t know how she would ever repay his kindness.
At that moment—whether it was because of the nature of the evening they had spent, or Cassy’s vulnerability, he didn’t know—Sam heard himself say, “I’m in trouble, Cassy.”
Cassy pulled back in surprise. “You’re joking.”
He gave a sarcastic laugh. “I wish I was.”
He walked Cassy across the Drive to sit on a bench by the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument. Pacing back and forth, he told her the story as best he could: about the ZT 5000 being assembled in Pretoria, about his suspicions that it had been deliberately set up by Canley to increase profits, about Brennan’s refusal to do anything about it. He told Cassy that he had to do something—but was at a loss as to how to go about it without completely destroying his career, his reputation and—long sigh—his family. At the last, his voice faltered.
Cassy didn’t seem shocked, nor did she seem surprised; she merely sat there, listening, periodically interrupting to ask a question.
“Well,” she said when he was finished, “the doing part is easy. WST can find that plant in no time and break the story. As you say, Electronika will move assembly fast enough after that.” She paused, thinking. “But what bothers me, Sam, is how Brennan has handled this.” She paused again, biting her lower lip.
A breeze blew up from the river, making the trees overhead rustle.
Sam sat down on the bench, sighing. “It doesn’t add up, does it? If they were setting me up as the fall guy in case they got caught—”
“Why tell you about it?” Cassy finished for him. “Why give you a chance to prepare yourself?” She shifted around on the bench to face him. “That’s what’s so strange.”
“You know—” Sam started.
“What?”
He shook his head. “It’ll sound crazy—”
“Say it.”
He leaned toward Cassy, dropping his voice. “I feel like I’ve been dared. Like Brennan and Canley are daring me to do something. You know? It’s as if—’Think you’re a tough guy, Wyatt? Prove it.’’’
Cassy nodded, staring off in the dark somewhere past Sam. “Yes,” she said slowly. “It does sound like a dare. I wonder...”
“And this will sound paranoid, for sure,” Sam added, watching a Yorkshire terrier being led past them. “I think my office phone is tapped.”
Cassy gave a half laugh. “Probably is,” she said, looking at him. “Come on.” She stood suddenly. “We’ve got to make a call.”
In the study of the Cochrans’ apartment, Sam sat on the couch while Cassy called a former colleague of hers in the WST newsroom, Paul Levitz, an investigative reporter for Conolly’s Financial News. She outlined the situation, naming no names, wondering if Paul had any instincts about it. Cassy listened into the phone for some time, her frown deepening, and then she glanced at Sam. Putting Paul on hold, she asked Sam, “How long has the new president been at Electronika?” When he said eight months, Cassy reported this information to Paul and then her eyebrows shot up. She put him on hold again. “Sam,” she said, “Paul just asked me if I was talking about Walter Brennan.”
“Oh, man,” Sam said, lurching to his feet.
“Look, Sam, I’d trust Paul with my life.” She paused. “I think you’d better pick up in the kitchen and talk to him.” Sam sighed, rubbing his forehead. “Okay,” he said. They were on the phone for two hours. After they swore themselves to secrecy—Paul, Cassy and Sam—Paul explained how it was he knew it must have been Brennan & Canley Cassy was talking about.
Two years before, Paul had been assigned to write a feature story on Caswell Zander, one of the most illustrious brokerage houses in America. Since a new, younger management team had taken over in 1981, Caswell Zander had increa
sed its profits by two thousand percent. As Paul’s research continued, he found that the increased profits had been largely generated by four key employees—the managing director, the trading chief, an analyst and a stockbroker. The four had an uncanny capacity for “hunches” concerning individual stocks that, again and again, made the house and its major accounts millions. Based only on his preliminary investigations, Conolly’s reclassified Paul’s feature-in-the-making as top secret.
At the time Paul was working on the story, DarkStar Inc. was being slapped with a multi-million-dollar negligence suit by a man who claimed his wife had been electrocuted by a DarkStar food processor—a product that accounted for nearly half of the company’s revenues. The publicity was explosive, sales crashed, and DarkStar stock fell eight points on the American Stock Exchange. Two days before the suit was filed, Caswell Zander had sold short three million shares of DarkStar stock (an order to sell the shares it did not yet own) at fifteen dollars. When the stock fell to seven dollars, they bought the three million shares, thus fulfilling their sell order from days before.
“That’s—that’s,” Sam stuttered, “a profit twenty-four million dollars.”
But wait. That wasn’t all. Caswell Zander then turned the twenty-four million around to buy up DarkStar shares. Ten days later the suit was thrown out of court as a hoax, and DarkStar screamed that it had been set up by its competitors. A PR campaign ensued, the food processors regained their number one share in the market, DarkStar’s stock rose five points, and Caswell Zander started unloading their shares at fourteen dollars.
“That’s got to be over forty million dollars they made,” Sam said.
“Closer to fifty,” Paul said.
At the time, Walter Brennan had been president of DarkStar and Chet Canley executive vice-president.
Riverside Drive Page 32