by Anne Calhoun
He introduced Charles to Daria, and stayed on the sidelines while Charles told her which performances he loved, and how she smoked her Oscar competition. Typical male chest-beating. Ryan knew that she felt her best work was in the theater, that she’d given performances to half-empty off-Broadway theaters that blew any film work she’d done straight out of the water. But she played the movie star well. Now it was his turn to play a role. This was why he’d brought Daria. Supermodels in New York were a dime a dozen, but an Oscar-winning actress? That would get Charles’s attention.
“Can I have a minute?” he asked when the conversation lagged. “Your office?”
Charles couldn’t turn him down without looking like an ass in front of Daria. “Sure,” he said.
He led Ryan down the hallway to the office Ryan had scoped out on a bathroom run earlier in the night, and evicted a couple with a single jerk of his head. The kid worked for one of Ryan’s traders, and his face went white with terror when he saw Charles. Don’t worry, Ryan thought. You’ve got bigger problems than getting caught with a hooker’s hand down your pants in the managing director’s home office. If this goes according to plan, you’re not going to have a job.
When the door closed behind the kid and his “date,” Ryan took a deep breath and reached in his pocket to thumb on the microrecorder. “I know what you guys are doing.”
Charles’s expression didn’t change. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”
“The Ponzi scheme. I know what you’re doing. I know how it works. I know the accounts, how the money flows, how you’re covering it all up.”
Silence.
“You want me to lay out your business for you?” He went on to describe the accounts, giving amounts, transaction histories. It was such a sweet, tight insider scam. The father, Don, started the scheme in the eighties, building the business with his secrecy and his cache and his aura of invincibility, while Charles, the eldest son, the new man with new ideas, streamlined and improved the technology and accounting. “I found the hidden accounts no one but you used for transactions. The accounting files, the real ones, not the bullshit mock-ups for investors and the SEC. You were smart. You skipped the little investors and went right for the whales. Foundations. Rich people who are unlikely to need the money to buy a house, unless they decide to buy a Van Gogh or something. I brought Daria Russell to this party. I can bring you Hollywood money.”
This time he let the silence stretch. His heart was racing, one beat indistinguishable from the other. He thanked God he’d never been a sweater. Charles was sweating, though. One single bead trickled down his temple.
“Look, I’m not going to screw you. I want in. I work for what I make. I can get more like her. I can help you hide it. You need fresh money, new blood, or this all falls apart.”
At that Charles’s eyes brightened just a little, and Ryan knew he had him, but Daria appeared in the doorway. Charles gave not a hint of acknowledgement, and Ryan thought of the recording device in his pocket, whirring away to capture nothing but his own windbag self.
“Enjoy yourselves,” Charles said to Daria when he reached the door, then he disappeared back down the hall.
“Are you all right?” Daria asked.
Ryan thumbed off the recorder. “Why? Don’t I look all right?”
“I’ve seen deer in headlights who look less terrified than you.”
“It’s that bad?”
“No. On the surface, you look like everyone else at this party. I’m pretty good at looking underneath. Actors lie for a living. To stay sane you either believe everyone’s fiction, or you learn to pick out the liars at twenty paces.”
“And you pick out the liars.”
She crossed the room, body swaying in the column of cream fabric, and stopped in front of him. He could smell good whiskey on her breath, see the sheen of expensive spa care on her shoulders and the upper curves of her breasts. “Truth is the only thing that matters. Telling it, hearing it, living it.”
Unbidden, an image of Simone in her jeans and a shirt open to reveal her throat rose in his mind. “Got any tricks for living the truth?” he asked.
Her lips curved, then she tipped her mouth up to his and kissed him.
The woman he wanted to try that particular trick with wasn’t the woman standing in front of him. “Let’s don’t and tell everyone we did,” he said.
She turned and locked the door. “Let’s do and tell everyone we didn’t,” she said. Her palm glided along the fabric of his cummerbund, unconsciously mirroring Simone’s challenge. Every straight man at the party would give his bonus check to have Daria’s hand on his hip, and all Ryan could think of was how Simone had touched him the same way, purposefully, with intent, knowing exactly what she was doing, how it would affect him.
You can’t have her. Focus on the woman at hand, on the task at hand. His breath shallowed as Daria kept her eyes on his face and worked her hand into the layers of clothing at his waist. He cupped her nape with his palm, and massaged until her shoulders slumped with pleasure. “Let’s do whatever we goddamn feel like and tell everyone to fuck off.”
***
Even when he got called out of bed to meet a skittish whistleblower, Agent Logan looked like nothing would faze him. Dressed in jeans, sneakers, and an NYU T-shirt, he leaned against an SUV in the parking garage off Seventh Avenue and held a cup of street vendor coffee. Ryan had sent the audio file from the meeting to Logan’s cell and gotten a call five minutes later.
“It’s four in the morning,” Ryan said. He was so tired his eyes burned, and his skin had a grimy, sleep-deprived feel. “You have some kind of special alert for my emails?”
“Yes,” Logan said, completely serious. He sipped from the coffee and studied Ryan, his blue eyes calm but obviously searching for signs of drugs or liquor.
“I’m sober,” Ryan said resignedly. “I wish I wasn’t, but I am. Do you have any idea how difficult it is not to get drunk in front of people who expect me to get drunk?”
“You blew it,” the Jock said, but the creases lining the right side of his face ruined the in-your-face tone. He wore tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt from a weight lifting competition. Ryan knew the type: never satisfied, never secure. Everything was a dick-measuring contest. “You got us jack.”
“I didn’t fucking blow it,” Ryan snapped. “That’s how they are. You think this is going to run like a movie? We’ll get the scene where the main character explains everything and the sidekick nods along? Not going to happen. They’ve been investigated by the SEC too many times, and Don’s paranoid as fuck. Charles doesn’t do anything without asking his father first. They’ll talk on their own schedule, in a place he feels safe.” Jesus. Would they make him strip to prove he wasn’t wearing a wire? It almost made him laugh.
“You think this is fucking funny?” the Jock said.
Ryan dug the travel pack of Tums out of his tuxedo pocket and chewed two. The agents and the guys running MacCarren weren’t all that different. Testosterone-driven, competitive, arrogant, all about winning, all about the thrill of the kill, not the chase. He used to love the chase, but somewhere, somehow, his soul had become about the kill. “No. I think this is a fucking tragedy for everyone involved. You included.”
The Jock bristled. Without looking at him, Logan held up a hand, and his partner shut his mouth. “What do you think will happen next?”
If he’d gotten anyone but Logan the day he’d walked into the FBI office, this would have gone nowhere. He would have quit MacCarren, found another job, and kept his mouth shut when the house of cards came tumbling down. But Logan somehow managed to frame telling the truth and seeking justice as this thing that mattered more than anything else in the world, all without saying a word. “I’m sorry about your wife’s grandmother,” Ryan said, rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “How’s she doing?”
�
�She’s devastated,” Logan said in his low rumble. Despite his uninflected tone, Ryan got the impression Logan was just as devastated. Shared grief. He tried to remember the last time he’d been close enough to a woman to share her grief. “Thanks for asking. What happens next?”
“Assuming some big scary guy from Jersey isn’t waiting for me in my apartment with a semiautomatic, they’ll think about what I said. What I know. They’ll talk to me somewhere else. Somewhere quiet they think they’re safe. Not the offices. Not a party like that one. Too many listening ears. The place was crawling with first- and second-year associates.”
“The MacCarrens are a flight risk,” the Jock said.
Ryan replied even as Logan was shaking his head to disagree. “They’re not a flight risk. Charles has kids in private school, and his sister, Arden, runs the MacCarren Foundation. Charles coaches his son’s little league team. They’re not going anywhere because they don’t believe they’ll get caught.” He took a deep breath and shook the Tums bottle. His stomach was sloshing around in his chest. “Ever tried Zantac? These fucking things aren’t working.”
“What about you?” the Jock said suspiciously. “On the tape you said you want in.”
“That’s how it works,” Ryan said, clinging to his patience. “Three choices: I go to you guys, I don’t say anything, or I want a piece of that action. What’s in character for me is that I want a piece of the action.”
His brain spun up what he would have done if something, maybe the long-buried memory of the man his father wanted him to be, hadn’t made him go to the authorities. He would have gone in just long enough to set aside a few million in numbered accounts, and buy a place somewhere without an extradition treaty. Except . . . even then he would have had the time to face what he’d done.
He’d found his limit. His stomach turned itself inside out, a combination of stress and the smell of gas, rubber, urine, and exhaust fumes steeped in a Manhattan parking garage in the middle of the summer, and this time there was no denying it. He bent over and threw up the Arctic char and a froth of chocolate mousse right on the garage floor.
“Jesus Christ,” the Jock said. Without saying a word, Logan got a bottle of water from the SUV and offered it to Ryan.
Ryan rinsed and spit. “I’m going to stop eating.”
“You’re close,” Logan said. “We knew this wouldn’t be easy. We’re going to do it anyway.”
“There is no ‘we’ in this,” Ryan snapped. “I knew this wouldn’t be easy. I’m going to do it anyway.”
Logan nodded, the faintest hint of a smile lifting the corners of his lean mouth. “Stay sober, and don’t do any recreational drugs. Prosecuting attorneys hate it, defense attorneys have a field day with it, and juries don’t like it.”
“The only drugs I’m interested in right now are the ones that settle my stomach,” Ryan said.
Logan smiled again. “You’re doing fine.”
Ryan wondered if whistleblowers ever became friends with their FBI handlers, or if Logan secretly agreed with Ryan’s assessment of himself. In the cab on the way home he texted his assistant. Floral arrangement suitable for bereavement to—
He took a minute to find the stationery store in the West Village. The owner’s photograph showed a woman with striking cheekbones, gray eyes, and sleek black curls. Matilda Davies, not Matilda Logan. Lots of women kept their maiden name professionally, especially when they’d built a business on their own. Simone would. The Demarchelier name meant more than Harrison.
Jesus, he needed some sleep. Like she’d go out with him, let alone marry him.
He finished the text to his assistant. Matilda Davies at West Village Stationery. Card: Sorry for your loss. No sig.
The reply came in less than two minutes, at five o’clock in the morning. Done.
He’d have to do something for his assistant, make sure she landed on her feet as unscathed from this as possible, and soon. In the meantime, he had to tell someone about this, however obliquely. Trust no one, that was the message Logan hammered home every time they met. Tell no one, trust no one, give away nothing. He wouldn’t violate that agreement, but he had to let off steam somehow, or the acid in his stomach would eat through the lining and seep into his abdominal cavity. He had to talk to someone about what he was doing to himself, someone who would listen, someone who anchored him in the stormy, churned mess of his life.
That someone was Simone.
***
He went home and slept until after noon, but when he woke up, the urge to see Simone hadn’t dissipated. So he went for a run, because maybe exercise would help.
It didn’t. He showered, dressed. Ate some dry toast, drank some water. His monklike life only reminded him of the power of confession, so he dug out a pair of shoes from the back of his closet and went for a walk.
Stopping at a bodega to pick up some Saint Rieul Triple was just hedging his bets.
As he swiped his credit card through the reader, an odd thought occurred to him. He’d gotten closer to Simone through one erotically charged conversation than he ever had to Jade, who was absolutely transparent, or to Daria, who was equally opaque. Why?
Because with her, you could let down the walls, let her see inside. With her, you could remember who you used to be. Who you could be again.
He used to be the kind of guy who sat on stoops and drank beer with pretty girls. He used to be real, not a parody of a human being. If anything was going to get him through the next few months, not to mention the trial and the publicity coming afterwards, he needed to be real. The time for burying his head in the sand passed the moment he sat down at a conference room table with Daniel Logan. Time’s up. Game over.
When he rounded the corner from Sixth Avenue, he saw Simone sitting on her stoop. Her posture sharpened when she saw him, made him aware of his slow pace, not the unhurried or leisurely pace of a man satisfied with life, the city, the heat of the summer, but somehow heavy, as if he were dragging a Jersey barricade behind him. He straightened his shoulders under his open collar shirt. He wore shorts, not long, not short, just shorts, but it wasn’t the kind of outfit that would attract the daughter of a French fashion house.
You’re done pretending, remember? This is who you are.
An empty bottle of the same beer he carried dripped condensation at her hip. He stood in front of her without saying a word, waiting for some sign. Her rising gracefully to her feet and going inside. A tip of her head to indicate he should move on. Instead she looked at him, then at the six-pack he carried.
“Did you bring me beer?”
It was certainly no hothouse flower, coaxed into bloom and carried through the streets of Manhattan by a dedicated bike messenger, but at least she hadn’t asked him if he’d thought very carefully about coming to see her again. Because he hadn’t. There was no thinking in this. Just need.
He shrugged. “I bought the brand of beer you drink. I didn’t go so far as to presume that you’d drink some with me.”
“I could drink another,” she said finally.
He sat down, kicked off the boat shoes, and braced his elbows on his knees. He would follow her lead. She twisted the tops off two beers, and tapped his shoulder to indicate he should take one.
“Thanks,” he said.
She made a halfhearted little noise he interpreted to mean she had heard him, but not really. He looked at her to find her staring at his feet in the boat shoes.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she said, looking away quickly. “Things strike me oddly. Those shoes, for some reason.”
She’d noticed. He smiled, let his eyes focus on the intersection in the distance. This was a truth he could tell her, a truth he’d rediscovered when he found the shoes at the back of his closet. “Let me tell you a story—”
“No more stories.”
“—about these shoes,” he said, eye
brows lifted. When she nodded, he continued. “I bought them the summer I interned at Goldman. Some of the guys in my internship cohort were like me—smart, hungry, working their way through school—but some of them were from families that built the original houses in the Hamptons, families that married into the Rockefellers and the Carnegies. That summer I got invited to do things I’d never seen or done before, sailing to Newport for the weekend, that sort of thing. My dad sold plumbing supplies. My mother taught school until she took early retirement a couple years ago. For vacations we went camping in a fifth wheel, hiked the Appalachian Trail. Not sailing. Not to the Hamptons. Those guys all had these shoes,” he said, and nudged his with his big toe. “I didn’t. I had sneakers. Cheap sneakers, at that.”
“So you bought those shoes.”
“I bought these shoes. And wore them, and the Wayfarers, even though I looked like a total poser in them and couldn’t tell aft from bow, until they had enough saltwater and sand and sweat in them to pass for a resident’s shoes. I still remember the day someone asked me for directions because I looked like a local. By then I knew I was going to make it. I was going to fucking own Wall Street. But I’d made it on a totally different level the day a tourist in the Hamptons asked me for directions.”
She didn’t laugh at him. “They gave you confidence.”
“Yup.”
“Why are you wearing them today?”
She wasn’t going to let him off the hook. Not Simone, with her redhead’s temper and her deft fingers and her eye for precision. He tipped back the bottle, savored the slide of liquid down his throat. “I wanted to remember that kid. He seems like a stranger, a kid from a story. Philly boy takes the city by storm. That kind of story.”
“Those are the stories we tell most frequently,” she said. “But I don’t know that they’re the best stories. I like stories of failures, of reinventions, of second chances.”