by John Gapper
“Ben’s a friend,” interjected Felix. “Let’s grant him his privacy.”
“Ben the mystery man, then,” Underwood said, a glint in his eye.
“John’s a fig banker to the stars and confidant of our new chief executive,” added Felix, making both sound suspicious.
“Fig?” I asked.
“Financial Institutions Group,” said Felix. “A banker who advises other bankers. Go figure.” He shook his head. “So here we all are, a happy band of brothers. It sounded as if you were having some trouble there, John.”
“Unfortunately, yes. Deals that used to take weeks go on for months now. Nothing’s simple anymore.”
Freeman tapped a pile of documents. “I’ve found something on the recap,” he said to Underwood. “We might be able to shed the tax liability.”
“Two bankers devise a clever way to avoid tax,” Felix whispered to me. “What could go wrong? We should leave these wizards to it.”
After an hour, Michelle laid out some plates of meats and cheeses, and Felix sipped a glass of red wine as he read. I took a nap. Soon Maine’s greensward appeared below, with its ridged coastline and leopard-skin lakes, as if God had picked up Cornwall and splattered it on the other side of the Atlantic. The aircraft floated over a pine forest and a small town dotted with the blue circles of backyard pools before settling gently on a runway.
We had Bangor Airport to ourselves. Apart from a couple of USAF air tankers sitting by corrugated steel hangars, there were no other aircraft in view. We taxied across to the terminal and halted. Michelle opened the front door, and Felix carried on reading without acknowledging that we were no longer in the air. Then a van drove up and a chubby official with a buzz cut entered the cabin.
“Hello, Officer Jones,” Felix said, reading his badge. “What’s the weather doing today?”
“Going up to about seventy, I believe,” the man said, leafing through Felix’s passport. He pronounced “about” as “aboot,” and I figured we must be close to the Canadian border. Having glanced at our papers, he went to the back to give the bags a cursory glance.
“How are you enjoying the flight, Ben?” Underwood asked, approaching up the aisle and placing his arms on two seats to examine me better.
“I wish I had one of these myself.”
“Friends of mine do, but then they worry about the things sitting on the tarmac, costing them money. If it flies, floats, or fucks, rent it-that’s what I say.”
“Or just cadge a ride, eh, John?” said Felix. His BlackBerry rang. “I’m in Maine.… Yes, Maine. Checking out summer camps,” he said. My wife, he mouthed at me.
“You gentlemen have a good flight,” said Officer Jones, and he departed. I seemed to have passed through U.S. Customs and Border Protection while seated in a chair. Within a few minutes, we were aloft again and following the coast south.
“Felix, where are we going?” I said.
“Oh, didn’t I mention it? So sorry,” he said, turning his head to check what the others were doing. They were heads down in work again, and he spoke quietly. “Nora thought it would be best to take Harry back to East Hampton. I said I’d drop you there.”
“Okay,” I said, feeling control slipping from me but unable to stop it. Episcopal didn’t expect me back for a couple of days, so I was free to visit the Hamptons, but this was a further step into the unknown. I’d started by suspending my judgment to discharge Harry, and then I’d found myself on board his jet. Now I was being taken to him, when convention said we should meet at Episcopal.
“Is this really Mr. Shapiro’s jet?” I asked Felix.
“Not exactly. It belongs to the bank. We’ve got a few, although it’s awfully politically incorrect. But one of the Gulfstreams is the chief executive’s and Harry got to keep it for a year when he left. Smoothed the deal, you know. Mind you,” he said, nodding at the two bankers, “some people treat it as public transport.”
It was lunchtime as we headed over the ocean to Long Island, and there were few clouds. I saw the tip of the South Fork reaching into the Atlantic like a beckoning finger and the strip of sand lining the coast all the way to the Rockaways. An airstrip stood out below us, like an encircled gray “A” against the green.
“It’s been a pleasure, Ben. I do hope everything goes well. Give my best to Harry. I think Nora’s sent a car to pick you up,” Felix said.
We made a low pass over the ocean and then sank over woods and fields to the tiny bump of our landing. Michelle opened the door at the front with a sad face, as though she were going to miss me terribly. Freeman was talking on a phone as I got up to depart and gave another silent nod.
“I’m going to get a breath of fresh air,” Underwood said, following me along the aisle and down the aircraft’s steps. He halted at the bottom with one foot on the tarmac as I pulled up the handle on my suitcase.
“I wish I was getting off, too,” he said. “I’ve got a place in Sag Harbor. Harry’s in East Hampton, isn’t he?”
I shrugged in mock ignorance.
“There’s one thing you ought to know, Ben,” he said. “Don’t you believe Felix’s sob stories. Harry brought this thing on himself. He’s the one to blame.”
“Good to meet you, Mr. Underwood,” I said. I walked off toward the low clapboard terminal building, determined not to stay for long.
6
I’d been to the Hamptons a few times to visit friends with summer rentals or to hang out on the beach for a day, but I’d never penetrated those high hedges and pristine gardens. How could I have? Staked by each house on the roads south of Route 27, where the wind rustled the tall trees, were foot-high signs with security company logos and white heraldic boards with black script: Private Property. Private Way. No Trespassing.
So as I sat in the front seat of a stone gray Range Rover, scanning white wooden gates and broad driveways, I enjoyed being welcome for once. I glanced to my left every so often, not only to observe a cottage or mini-mansion, but also to take a glimpse at my driver. I knew only her first name: Anna. It was all she’d given away.
When I’d emerged from the airport building into the parking lot, she’d been standing by the car, one black flip-flop-clad foot propped against the driver’s door, chewing a stalk and refixing her straw blond hair in a ponytail. She’d been hard to miss because there was no one else in sight and she’d given me a wave and a broad smile, pulling her lips so far back to show her teeth that it looked like a contortionist’s trick. I’d grinned back stupidly, wondering what someone like her was doing there-I’d have expected to find her in the city.
She was in her late twenties, I guessed, but had a girlish affect, from her unbridled smile to her dewy skin and red fingernails. She wore a lime green T-shirt, and as she’d turned away to climb into the car, I’d seen the tiny blond hairs on her swanlike neck. She seemed to straddle the border between innocence and experience.
“Beautiful gardens, aren’t they?” I said, looking out to my right.
She laughed. “They’re crazy, some of them. Look over there on the right, by that white house.”
We swung round a corner and passed a long hedge with a tall gate in the middle. Arrayed along both sides of the hedge were six plane trees, each trunk held vertical by three duckbill cables pegged to the ground.
“None of those trees were there last week. They all went up on Sunday.”
“You’re joking.”
“That’s how they do things here. They don’t believe in delayed gratification.”
“There’s a lot of security.”
She laughed. “You’re telling me. They’re all paranoid someone might break into their little paradise. I went with Nora to a cocktail party once, a place over near Water Mill some billionaire owns with his blond Hungarian model third wife-she’s about seven feet tall. We were in a room at the back and they had these giant screens showing shots of the beach and the ocean. Nora asked her what they were for.”
Anna put on an Eastern European accent. “
‘Our security is gut from the bay side, but we are wulnerable from the south,’ ” she said, then switched back to her normal voice. “Ha! Wulnerable from the south! What was she scared of? A platoon of Marines and a beach landing?”
We were getting close to the ocean. I could smell the sea air, and the light had gone a milky white, as if the sun were being refracted through frosted glass. We turned down a lane with a line of houses on the ocean side, perched along a high dune. Anna slowed at the end by a gray split-rail fence. Two weeping willow trees flanked the entrance to a pink gravel drive, which she followed as it curved back on itself and up the steep rise of the dune. Nature had been tamed on this side of the slope. It was planted with sculpted bushes and lawn, divided up the middle by a stone path. We passed two gardeners giving a hedge a morning shave and halted on a square of gravel by one of the prettiest houses I’d ever seen.
It was more cottage than house, like something out of a fairy tale: an oblong stuccoed in pale green, the same color as the lichen spreading over the stones on the ocean side. The roof was tiled in brown cedar shingles that curved over the eaves and around the top of each doorway like a thatch. To the west, where we stood, was a small tower topped with a wizard’s hat of shingle. On the side facing the ocean was a pristine lawn ending at a ridge from which the dune tumbled to the beach. A swimming pool edged with white stone, no more than thirty feet long, was cut into the lawn, and beyond was a view of dunes, pristine beach, and ocean that ran for miles.
Sitting on the lawn, gazing out to sea, was Harry.
The girl walked toward a small sign by the side entrance that read SERVICE. I wasn’t sure whether it was a comment on our status or just the easiest way to go, but she led me into a light-filled, slate-surfaced kitchen with big stainless-steel appliances. She went over to a brushed-steel intercom on the wall and prodded a button.
“Nora, your guest is here,” she said, hardly louder than her normal speaking voice, and gestured to me to pass by her through another door.
On the far side was a large living room with two white sofas facing each other across a broad wool rug with a geometric pattern in gray and black. There was a low table on which sat an antique brass sculpture of a hand grasping a ball. Above was a light housed in a globelike shade studded with colored tiles that looked like a piece of art. The room led out onto a veranda facing the lawn with a long wooden table, set with white napkins and glass candleholders like a ship’s lanterns. The whole thing was perfectly ordered and restful, an aesthetic intelligence behind it.
After I’d stood there by myself for a minute, Nora entered from the far side. She wore a pale linen shift with an embroidered front and linen pants, and she looked far more at ease than she’d been at the hospital. She walked across to me and, before I could shake hands with professional formality, kissed me on the cheek. It left a pleasant impression of soft skin and expensive scent.
“How is your father? I’ve been worried about him,” she said, gesturing to me to take a seat on one of the sofas. It seemed unlikely that she really had, since she’d never met him and she hardly knew me, yet she sounded genuine.
“He’s doing okay, thank you. I think he’ll recover all right if he follows his doctor’s advice.”
Nora smiled knowingly. “Getting middle-aged men to do what they’re told can be hard, can’t it?”
I found her hard to argue with, but I felt the need to restore some of my authority after the manner in which I’d been brought there. I tried to sound stern.
“It was kind of you to arrange the flight, but I’d expected to see Mr. Shapiro back in New York, as we’d agreed.”
Nora gave an embarrassed grimace. “I’m sorry. Harry wanted to come here to rest, and I didn’t want to agitate him. I hope you understand. Would you like to see him now?”
I walked through the living room to the conservatory and onto the lawn. It was a blissful sensation to step straight out of that ordered house into an infinity of nature and ocean, with the breeze blowing in my face. Harry had his back to me and was reading a book through half-moon glasses. As I reached him, he looked up and studied my face for a while. His own was tense but less agitated than before.
“Sit down,” he said.
There were chairs at the table, all of them soft and cushioned. I looked around for a solid seat-something suggesting formality-but there was none in sight, so I sank into one of them. I tried to compensate by perching forward on the edge with my hands clasped.
“Move around so I can see you,” Harry instructed.
I dragged my chair over to the spot he’d indicated and found myself squinting at him with the sun in my eyes. It was an old maneuver of his, I suspected. It irritated me, but it was at least encouraging that Harry was getting his game back.
“How have you been feeling, Mr. Shapiro?” I asked.
He had a cup of tea resting on the arm of his chair, and he pulled at the string of the bag a few times while he mulled the question. Then he laughed bitterly. “I’ve had better weeks. You try being locked up, having your razor taken away every morning, and someone shining a flashlight in your room during the night.”
“Patients often find the precautions difficult, but there are reasons for them.”
“Maybe for some people. Not for me.”
He did some more stage business with the tea bag and gazed away from me out to sea. He was talking faster than in hospital, which was a good sign-the psychomotor retardation was easing as his brain started to function better.
“How are you feeling?”
“I’ve slept some more.”
“You haven’t had any thoughts of death?”
He glanced at me with a creased brow, as if he couldn’t grasp what I was getting at. Then he frowned, gazing down at the lawn.
“I’m not going to kill myself.”
He hadn’t looked me in the eye, but it was at least a firm declaration of the kind he hadn’t given before. A good thing. Harry levered himself upright and looked across the lawn to where a row of flower beds lined the edge of the dune. “Let’s take a walk,” he said, striding to a break in the beds, through which lay a wooden platform.
Joining him, I saw that it marked the top of a stairway leading down the dune onto a line of cracked, weathered planks. The planks formed a rolling path up and down the sand and sea grass until they ran out after thirty yards, leaving only a sandy path the rest of the way to the beach. It would have been a wonderful place for children playing hide-and-seek, an amorphous territory between habitation and nature. We walked down the steps in silence: it was so narrow that I had to follow behind him.
He had the beach to himself. In the distance, where the road off which Anna had turned to reach the house ended, a woman in a head scarf was throwing sticks for her dog. Apart from her there were only sand and waves, crashing on the beach and throwing up spray. The sand near the dune was fine and hard to walk across, but down by the ocean’s edge it formed a smooth, solid surface. When Harry reached that area, he started to walk westward.
“Tell me more about what happened,” I said as I followed him.
It was hard to keep up with his long strides, and his renewed sense of purpose reassured me. He remained silent for about three hundred yards and then grunted a couple of times as if preparing to say something. The disadvantage of walking by him was that I couldn’t see his face to observe his reactions, but it provided detachment, like an analyst’s couch. The silence extended as we walked, and then he halted, facing the sea, where tiny waves foamed into the sand.
“It could have been a great deal,” he said. “A great deal. It wasn’t a sure thing, they never are, but if the market hadn’t tanked, it would have worked out fine. There was no way I could have known. I couldn’t have known.”
He gazed at the horizon, and he seemed to be responding bitterly to the voices in his head. I had no idea what he was talking about. Then he bent down to pick up a shell and scraped sand off the underside with his thumb as he spoke.
“It was about a year ago, I guess. Things were going so well for Seligman, it was great. There were rumblings over subprime and some hedge funds had closed, but it felt like our time had come. We’d turned that little place into something. You know what I’d always wanted it to become? I wanted us to be like Rosenthal. They were never going to let it happen. I know that now.”
Even I had heard of Rosenthal amp; Co.-everyone had. It was the one Wall Street bank that had escaped the housing crisis, had come through the crash without collapsing or even being bruised. Everyone seemed to admire it, or be jealous of it, or think it had some unfair advantage. I didn’t know the difference between one bank and another, but I could grasp what had driven Harry. There was an outfit like that in every field-the place for which everyone wants to work. Episcopal was the Rosenthal of New York medicine, or so we convinced ourselves and so the patients believed.
“I knew a guy who’d run private equity in Europe for Rosenthal. Marcus Greene,” Harry said. “Knows his stuff. Hard-assed on deals, would squeeze you for a dime, but I thought he was a good guy. Nora was friends with Margaret, his wife. We’d see them on weekends out here. They’ve got a place over in Sagaponack.
“Greene left Rosenthal in the mid-nineties and started his own firm. He called it Grayridge, after a hill in Georgia he knew as a child. So he says, anyway. Felix thinks Greene made it up. He’s never met anyone who’s heard of the place. It was good timing, when LBOs and hedge funds were getting big. A decade later, he was a billionaire. He had the Rolling Stones at his fiftieth birthday. It was fun,” he added wanly. “He calls me one day, supposedly to chat about CDS clearing or something. ‘You know, Harry,’ he says, ‘it’s time for us to talk. I think Seligman and Grayridge would make a great fit.’ I thought it was a terrific idea, it could put us up there with Rosenthal, so I said, ‘Sure, Marcus, we’ll take a look.’ I’d heard talk that things weren’t going well for him. They might be in trouble.”