by Megan Goldin
‘What do you mean?’
‘Her twin brother, Carl, was killed in a car accident when they were seventeen. They blamed Sylvie. A witness said Sylvie made no effort to pull her brother clear of the wreckage before it was enveloped in flames. Sylvie denied it. Said she’d been drunk and couldn’t get to him before the fire became too dangerous. I guess the cops bought her story. They didn’t charge her, anyway. Maybe they figured that the burns were punishment enough; they killed her modelling career.’
‘What burns?’
‘Haven’t you noticed that she never wears anything sleeveless? Doesn’t matter how hot it gets. Even when we travelled to Delhi and the weather was close to 120 degrees, she still wore long sleeves.’
The two of us walked into the Chinese restaurant across the road from our office building. The lady by the cash register passed Jules a paper bag with our order.
‘How did Sylvie get into investment banking if she started off as a model?’ I asked as we headed back to the office.
‘Sylvie’s smart. Well connected. Our clients think she’s hot and they like working with her. But mostly, I think Sylvie’s addicted to the adrenalin. We all are.’
‘She certainly seems to know her stuff,’ I said. We got into the elevator up to our office.
‘I know she can be a bitch, but don’t let it bother you,’ Jules advised. ‘It’s par for the course in this business.’
‘I think I’ve grown a second layer of skin in the two weeks that I’ve been here,’ I joked.
Wasn’t that the truth! They were a cliquey bunch. Jules too, despite the occasional friendly overtures. Jules was a gossip. He loved getting information and then spreading it around to see what happened. Jules was like a kid poking a stick into an ant nest to see how the ants responded.
None of the team made much of an effort to let me feel as if I belonged. They didn’t once ask me if I’d found an apartment or how I’d settled in. They went out together sometimes, all of them except Lucy. I was never invited. Sylvie was the coldest out of all of them. I had hoped that she and I could be allies. There were few enough women at the firm, you’d think we’d all stick together.
But that wasn’t Sylvie’s style at all. I had the distinct impression that Sylvie saw other women as a threat. Even me, despite the fact that I was a wet-behind-the-ears new recruit while she’d already been at Stanhope for close to three years.
We had rare moments of friendship. The first was the day after the project had been submitted to the leadership team for approval. It was a Friday night and we were finishing off supplementary material for the submission. We both left work at 10 p.m. and found ourselves alone together in the elevator on our way out.
I’d moved into my new apartment two days earlier and hadn’t had time to unpack due to the killer hours we’d been working. A 10 p.m. finish was relatively early and I figured that I’d spend what was left of the evening sorting out my bedroom, which was a mess of boxes. I smiled in the friendly way that you do when you have to stand in close proximity to a colleague in an elevator. Sylvie looked through me. Didn’t say a word.
I thought to myself that was ridiculous. I’d spent more time with Sylvie over the previous days then I’d spent with Stacey, my roommate in Chicago, in over a year. Yet Sylvie and I weren’t capable of having a superficial conversation in an elevator for two minutes.
Someone had to break the ice, I decided it would be me. Worst case scenario, she’d rebuff me, which she’d already done so many times that I was immune to her snubs by that point.
‘I’m not used to getting home this early,’ I joked. ‘Do you want to get a drink?’
She looked up from her phone in surprise. She hadn’t expected me to say a word.
‘Why not?’ she answered. ‘I know a place around the corner.’
It was a bar, down a set of stairs, with a twenties vibe. A brass plaque alongside the red door said it had been a speak-easy during prohibition. I ordered a margarita with lime. ‘I’ll have the same,’ Sylvie told the barman.
We drank two margaritas with silver sea salt from France on the rim, followed by a couple of shots. While we were drinking, a guy with a two-toned collar came in with a friend. They made a beeline for us.
You could tell he was a broker and thought he was hot shit. He wore Gordon Gekko-style braces to hold up his pants and a brash tie.
‘I’ll cover their bill,’ he told the barman, as he pulled up a seat at the bar next to Sylvie.
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘We’ve already paid.’
‘Then I’ll buy you more drinks,’ he offered. Too loudly. ‘The night’s still young, ladies,’ he said, checking his Rolex Submariner despite the fact that there were clocks behind the bar for five cities around the world, including New York.
‘We’re done for the night,’ Sylvie said, getting up.
‘Hang on.’ He put his hand on Sylvie’s arm. ‘We’ve only just met. Jimmy and I would like to get to know you two girls a little better.’
‘We would have liked that,’ said Sylvie, without making much effort to disguise the sarcasm. ‘But we have an early morning meeting.’
‘On a Saturday? The markets aren’t even open. Give me your boss’s number. I’ll explain that his beautiful secretary needs some time off.’
‘You’re not very good at hearing the word “no”, are you?’ I said, pushing his hand off Sylvie. ‘She was trying very politely to let you down easy. You’re not her type. You’re at least ten years too old and thirty pounds too heavy. Plus you’re at least two inches too short. Probably in more than one department.’ And with that we walked out.
Braces man and his sidekick shouted something after me. I think it was something to the effect of us being lesbians, but we couldn’t really hear them because we were laughing so hard.
‘Oh my God,’ said Sylvie when we’d climbed the steps back to street level. ‘That was hilarious. I haven’t laughed this hard in ages. Now I have to pee!’
‘Well, you’d better do it at my place. No way we’re going back in there.’
We took a cab to my apartment. It was five blocks away. Much closer than Sylvie’s place, which was all the way uptown.
I’d taken up the lease from a colleague sent to London on a ten-month secondment. I saw the ad on the noticeboard in the lunch area at the office and figured I might as well take it. I realised there would be no spare time to go looking for places.
I shared the apartment with Amanda, a management consultant who was on the road five days out of seven. It was decorated with Ikea furniture and felt more like a cheap hotel than a cosy apartment. It was a place to sleep – I already understood that most of my waking hours would be spent at work so the lack of character and back alley view from my bedroom window made little difference to me.
Amanda wasn’t home that night, she was in Atlanta for two weeks. Sylvie and I ended up watching a movie and drinking homemade hot chocolate. Sylvie went home by cab some time after 1 a.m.
I was back at work the following morning at 8 a.m. It was my three-week anniversary at the firm but it felt as if I’d been there for six months. I supposed that was almost accurate if I added up all the hours that I’d worked.
Sylvie waltzed into the office not long after I arrived. In contrast to my washed-out face and hair tied back into a severe knot, Sylvie looking amazing, like she’d had twelve hours’ sleep and a morning facial.
I went out for a coffee run and brought lattes back upstairs for everyone. The seat near Sylvie was empty so I figured I’d sit near her. After all, we were buddies now. The ice had well and truly melted when she’d vomited into my toilet bowl while I held her hair away from her face.
Before I could sit on the chair, she pulled it over and slipped her legs onto it. It was the exact pose she’d been in on the first day we’d met. There was no apology. She didn’t even look in my direction.
Sylvie picked up a two-inch thick report and began to work with her laptop on her knees. All morning, she did
n’t so much as turn her head to acknowledge me. I didn’t know if she was more embarrassed that she’d socialised with me or that she’d shown me she was human.
In retrospect, I think she didn’t give a hoot either way. That was Sylvie. One day she was your best friend and the next she was your mortal enemy.
Vincent held the cold metal grip of the Glock in his hands as he surveyed the shadowed faces of his colleagues. ‘Would someone please answer my question? Who brings a loaded gun to a meeting?’
The ceiling vent noisily pumped out a fresh cycle of warm air. An awkward silence hung over them.
‘I do,’ said Jules, finally. More silence followed. ‘I was mugged a few months ago,’ he added defensively. ‘Pistol-whipped. You saw the bruises, Vincent. After that, I bought a gun for protection. When I received the message for this meeting, telling me … No, let’s be more precise here: ordering me to turn up at night, in a remote part of the South Bronx … there was no way that I was going to come to this neighbourhood unarmed.’
‘I don’t actually think it’s legal for you to carry a concealed weapon,’ Vincent pointed out. He tested the weight of the gun in his hands, moving it from one hand to the other. There was a magazine in the gun. It was loaded and ready to fire.
‘What, are you a cop now? Vincent, give it back.’ Jules hated the pleading note in his voice. It was his damn gun and he shouldn’t need to beg. Everything felt out of control in the dark, choking claustrophobia. Jules suddenly needed that gun desperately. He’d do anything to get it.
‘I’ll give it back to you when we get out,’ Vincent promised.
‘You have no goddamn right,’ hissed Jules.
He stepped towards Vincent in a fury. He tried to snatch the gun from Vincent’s hand but his boss shifted the gun to his other hand faster than Jules could seize it in the dark. He passed it back between his hands as Jules lunged for it again. They scuffled over the gun like children fighting over a favourite toy.
‘Give it to me, Vincent,’ Jules practically shouted. The claustrophobia and incessant heat had made him lose all restraint. ‘You can’t confiscate my property. It’s my gun and I want it back.’
Vincent pushed Jules’s hands away once more and took a step back to evade him. It was a mistake. Vincent had backed himself into the corner of the elevator and now had nowhere to go. He was trapped. Jules came up so close their faces were practically touching. Vincent put the hand holding the gun up above his head.
‘It’s mine,’ Jules said again. He grabbed for the gun but instead knocked Vincent’s glasses off his face. They fell to the floor before either of them realised what happened. Jules lunged for the gun again and they all heard the glasses crack under his shoe.
Jules knew that without his glasses Vincent was at a disadvantage in the dark. He tried again to grab the gun, reaching behind Vincent’s back. ‘You don’t have any right to —’
Vincent kneed him in the groin before he could finish his sentence. Jules fell to his knees in agony.
‘You bastard,’ Jules half-whispered when he was able to speak again. ‘You brought us here deliberately, didn’t you? Vincent? It’s another one of your sick games. Always pitting us against each other. Always testing us.’
Vincent tucked the gun into his belt at the small of his back. He put out his hand and helped Jules up. ‘Think whatever you like,’ Vincent said as he lifted him to his feet. ‘I didn’t set up any of this. But I can tell you one thing: no way in hell am I letting anyone as short-tempered as you hold on to a loaded weapon in an elevator.’
Sylvie stood between Jules and Vincent. Both men were breathing heavily after their confrontation. She knew Jules well enough to know that he was gone but not out. He’d get his strength back and, when Vincent least expected it, Jules would hit back in the only way he knew how. Below the belt.
She’d been almost as shocked to see how Jules had confronted Vincent as she’d been to find his gun lying on the floor. Jules had always held Vincent in the highest regard. It wasn’t just because Vincent was his boss and the centre of power in their division, it was a respect that ran deeper than that. Jules craved Vincent’s praise. When he received it, he glowed with pleasure. When Vincent gave him a dressing down, it was like watching a dog getting beaten with a stick. She always felt bad for Jules when that happened. Even once she came to hate him.
Sylvie suspected that Jules saw Vincent as a father figure, even though there was only a nine-year age gap between the two men. Jules’s father had lost interest in him after his mother died. He was sent to boarding school a few months later, and from there he went straight to college. His father was onto wife number four by the time he graduated. All of Jules’s stepmothers produced copious offspring.
Jules had gone from being the sole heir to a sizeable family fortune to being one of many beneficiaries of a dwindling inheritance, which his father had squandered on alimony and bad investments. Jules barely spoke to his father. He was bitter that he’d have to share whatever remained of his beloved grandfather’s fortune with seven half-siblings he barely knew.
Vincent pointed Jules’s Glock towards the floor. He removed the magazine in one smooth motion with a loud click of metal. Then he pulled back on the slide to empty the chamber. A clatter echoed as a bullet fell to the floor. Vincent shoved the gun back in place under his belt.
‘That should never have happened,’ he said. ‘Now let’s get going. So far we’ve only figured out two clues.’
‘Vincent, I’m sorry about your glasses,’ said Jules, suddenly contrite. ‘I’ll reimburse you. I shouldn’t … I shouldn’t have reacted like that. I don’t like being in enclosed places. It makes me jittery. And it’s so damn hot here that I can’t think straight.’
‘All the more reason for you not to be carrying a loaded weapon,’ said Vincent. ‘Now come on everyone, let’s look around again. We have just over thirty minutes left to solve this thing.’
Vincent had been a lieutenant in the Dutch forces in Afghanistan. He’d done a two-year tour before his university studies. It had given him an authority and confidence that other students his age lacked. It was one of the reasons why he’d quickly risen up the ranks after joining Stanhope, first as an intern and then as a graduate recruit. He had leadership qualities that were unteachable at any place of higher education. A quality that came from being responsible for the lives of other soldiers from a young age.
Vincent’s domination also came from his physical appearance. His height was imposing, he was close to six foot three, and he had wide shoulders and blue eyes so piercing that people looked away because it felt as if he was stripping down their soul.
Vincent always wore pristine shirts and suits to work. He bought top of the range Zegna. People mistakenly thought it was because Vincent was status conscious, but he didn’t much care about labels. What he cared about was efficiency. With Zegna, it was a one-stop shop. Once a year, he’d walk into a store, put down thirty grand and sort out his wardrobe for the next twelve months.
While he looked like a well-dressed businessman at the office, at the gym where Vincent did mixed martial arts each morning, he looked like a street fighter. He had a tattoo with Chinese characters snaked around the bicep of his right arm and in the middle of his chest he had the insignia of his army unit in the Royal Netherlands Army, a sword pointing upward, with the initials of each of his men underneath. Nobody at work had ever seen his tattoos.
After two years at the firm, Vincent had been chosen to lead his own dedicated team. It was part of a strategy to set up crack, multi-disciplined teams that were small and nimble. Jules, Sam and Sylvie were all assigned to Vincent from the start.
Vincent had dark blond hair in those days. In recent years, he kept his hair so short that it looked almost shaved. He had a wide face with broad cheekbones and a sculptured chin. To those he cared about, Vincent was principled and fair, and he showed patience that was unusual for someone of his stature.
But to his enemies, he was ut
terly ruthless. People were wary of crossing Vincent. They could sense a violent streak underneath the surface. He lived by a strict moral code of hard work and diligence, which had been the values of his childhood. Vincent drank but never to the point of excess. In an industry in which popping pills to cope with gruelling hours and stress was par for the course, Vincent’s only pick-me-up was a glass of organic wheatgrass each morning. He never drank coffee. His only caffeine was from green tea.
Vincent had changed in the years since she first met him, thought Sylvie. He’d weakened. His authority had eroded. Perhaps it was because Mitch Graves, one of his biggest supporters on the board, had retired. Or maybe it was because the last six months had been brutal for the team. They’d had a bad run of losing key accounts.
Vincent had been getting increasingly frustrated recently. Office gossip suggested the executive team was losing confidence in him. He’d been nervous lately. Volatile.
Sylvie considered it a further sign of Vincent’s diminishing influence that Jules had felt confident enough to confront him so aggressively. Jules had reminded Sylvie of a young male gorilla challenging a silverback. Vincent had drawn first blood and Jules was suitably chastened. For now, anyway.
Vincent had always been an enigma to his subordinates. He had an apartment in Tribeca and another in Amsterdam that he rented out. Other than that Vincent kept his private life just that.
When Sylvie occasionally bumped into Vincent at the theatre or a restaurant, his dates were always pretty dark-haired girls. She always thought that his clear preference for brunettes explained why he’d never made a play for her, even before he became her direct manager. That was a rare experience for Sylvie; Vincent’s lack of interest in her had always grated.
Many times she’d telephoned him late at night or early in the morning for urgent work matters and, a few times, she had heard the movements of someone else in the background. The rustle of sheets or a running shower. He’d never brought his girlfriends to office functions. He’d always been circumspect about discussing his private life.