by Jonathan Dee
I felt stupid for not having thought of it myself already, even though to be fair I’d been unconscious most of the day: Run down by a city bus? Lawsuit! As long as you don’t die it’s like hitting the Lotto. The whole thing was such a slam dunk they never even finished picking a jury. Three hundred and sixty thousand dollars, though of course a third of that came off the top for old Mr. Bond. He earned it, don’t get me wrong: he got the business about me being drunk excluded, and man, you should have heard him, it was like he was arguing for his own life. He asked me, right before we signed, if I wanted the driver fired as a condition of the settlement. I said nah, why bother, let her run over some other lucky asshole and make him rich too. She’s like accidental Robin Hood, this mama.
So I don’t know if you’ve ever had a lot of money, but it fucking weighs on you. I mean you can have a thousand bucks and feel pretty smart, but when you’ve got $240K just sitting there doing nothing, it can make you feel pretty stupid. I was at the lab then, but it was before Yuri was working there. The only guys I had to talk to were basically morons, and they started getting in my ear, you know? You’ve got to invest it. You’ve got to put it to work for you, otherwise it just sits there and gets the shit taxed out of it until it’s gone, either you grow it or it dies, it’s the American way.
So fine. I’m on the internet a lot anyway—that’s one thing I’d done with all the money, I bought a decent computer for once, with a DSL connection, and a new TV too—and I go on Ask Jeeves and I ask for advice on how to invest money in the stock market. It sounds incredibly naïve, I know, and it was, but at that point my two choices were pretty much Ask Jeeves or Ask Those Ignorant Dicks You Work With. I go to a few of these top sites, and before long I start getting these emails, addressed to me personally, from someone who clearly knows I’ve got some money to my name. His name is Garrett Spalding, and he wants me to go in on a fund, a private fund—that’s all he kept calling it, a fund—where I had a guaranteed return on my money each year of nine percent. Probably more—he sent these annual reports I couldn’t read, but the upshot was that he was some kind of stock-picking genius, he just needed enough of a stake from a handful of select clients so that when he called the big banks to make a trade, they’d take his call. Nine percent minimum was his guarantee, good times or bad, bull market or bear.
So you are smarter than me and can see where this is going, probably. I sure couldn’t. I kept ten grand and gave him the rest, and that was pretty much that, I never heard from the fucker again. A total con man. A good one too. Not that I made it very hard for him. I never even met him face to face, if you can believe how stupid I was. I did have one meeting, in an actual office, with some underling of his, because of course a legit stock-picking genius like him was way too much of a big shot to meet with every single new client. I swallowed it all. Now I wonder if the underling wasn’t just him all along. Secretly laughing his ass off. I mean he was a pro. Those fake-ass annual reports couldn’t have been cheap.
I won’t say I felt relieved—I was pissed as hell about getting clowned like that and for months I kept trying to pick fights when I was out, just so maybe while getting my ass kicked I could land one punch on some face and pretend it was Garrett Spalding’s—but I will admit that, in a weird way, just going back to living paycheck to paycheck made me feel less stressed, because I was okay at that, it’s what I know. Four years go by. And then out of nowhere, I get a phone call from Towles the lawyer. Young guy, not too much older than me. I don’t know how these fucking guys keep finding me, but what the hell, the last lawyer worked out pretty good for me, right?
“We found your contact info in his records. You aren’t the only one he’s done this to,” Towles says. “He’s defrauded a lot of people out of a lot of money over the years. Millions.”
“You’re suing him?” I said. “So you’ve found him? You know where he is?”
“Not exactly. He’s fled the country, we think. But we’re starting to learn where some of his assets are. And legally that’s all we need.”
“This fund thing. Does it even exist?”
“Well,” Towles said, “yes and no.”
Whatever. I just heard the part where it didn’t cost me anything. And who knows, maybe I get my money again.
Towles said he didn’t know how many people would be joining me, because he was still in the process of uncovering how many people this Spalding guy had ripped off over the years. The more the better, he said, though it also seemed to me like the more of us there were, the less money I’d get back. But a suit like this had to have what he called name plaintiffs. He had five of us so far, and he wanted to go ahead and file the suit, it wouldn’t prevent other names from being added later, but he thought it was very important to be first out of the gate and so he wanted to go ahead with the five of us, five ordinary, non-institutional investors, five idiots retarded enough to hand their life savings to a con man. He set up a meeting at his office where we would all get together and agree on strategy and be deposed. That was the meeting that was supposed to have taken place that Wednesday afternoon, except I was the only one committed enough or dumb enough to still show up for it.
So now it was Thursday and I walked again, because the walking helped level me out. It always does. I had a stop to make first, at the post office. It’s a condition of my probation that I have to send pay stubs to my officer every month, and I have to send them registered mail. Whatever, I’m used to it, and it’s almost over anyway. The only drag is that the Morningside Heights post office is the worst post office in the world, and of course I can’t base that on having visited every PO in the world or even in New York. I am basing it on the fact that it is impossible to even imagine any place more aggravating. The people who work there are the stupidest, laziest, slowest, fattest, most sadistic people you have ever encountered in your life. They must recruit from all over the city to find these people. I hate them. Everybody hates them. But not half as much as they hate you back.
I get there that day and it’s crowded, like always, but it’s as quiet as a church. People are just standing in line. And eight of the ten customer windows are open. That has literally never happened. The day before Christmas you might see like five of them open at the same time. Then there are these little conversations. Usually the only time two strangers start talking in a post office line is just before some kind of shouting match starts, maybe with some mild shoving or, once in a thousand times, an honest-to-God fight, between two women if you’re really lucky. I’ve seen one or two. But now people are kind of whispering to each other, and I realize these are people who don’t even know each other, and the little bell keeps going off nice and regular—62, 63, 64—and suddenly this one whisperer a few people in front of me starts crying, and the woman she’s talking to puts down the tube mailer she’s holding and puts her arms around her.
“What’s eating her?” I say, out loud apparently. This old guy in front of me turns and gives me a funny look. Then he sees I’m just holding a regular envelope.
“You look like you’ll be quick to finish,” he says. “No reason to spend all day in line. Why don’t you go ahead of me?”
What the fuck was wrong with everybody? I mean I knew. I’m not a complete idiot. I’m not saying I didn’t know what the cause and effect were. I’m just saying something about it seemed put on to me, performed. The cause was real, but the effect was fake. Or maybe the other way around. I don’t know how to say it so it makes sense.
The lobby of the building down on West Forty-eighth seemed a little more normal than yesterday, less haunted-looking, more going on. I saw the same two security guys, but not before they saw me: their eyes were right on me. They stayed where they were, though. The younger guy said something into his walkie-talkie. I went up to reception and told the girl I had an appointment with Mr. Towles at Rice and Powers. Then I sort of held my breath while she called upstairs, because I wasn’t sure what I’d just said was strictly true anymore. I didn’t feel like
getting thrown out of anyplace, especially with everybody so tense. The phone call went on for a while, way past what would’ve been needed for somebody to just say “Send him up.” I tried not to look at the security guys to see if they’d started moving in my direction. Then all of a sudden, hallelujah, the chick at reception hands me a Visitor pass and points toward one of the elevator banks.
It was still pretty empty, not like usual, you could tell, and I rode up to the twenty-seventh floor all by myself. This Rice and Powers joint was a palace. Lots of leather chairs. Lots of phones blinking but you couldn’t hear anything. There was one other guy waiting in reception, rugged-looking dude, wearing a tie but otherwise dressed like he was there to fix something. He nodded at me. I went to the girl and said I was there to see Mr. Towles, I had an appointment. She said what time, and I said what time is it now? She was fucking hot, by the way, like model hot, so hot it probably made me a little irritable, especially when she spoke to me in that way hot women speak to invisible guys and said would I mind just having a seat. She pointed to the chairs, like I wouldn’t have worked that out myself, like a creature like me might just sit on the floor unless someone explained things to him. I took one of the leather chairs that faced the picture window, looking downtown. And that was the first time, other than on TV, that I could see the actual smoke. That’s how high up we were. It was wild. And when you looked up from it, you were looking pretty much straight into the blue sky, which was pretty unnerving too, like, empty as it was, something might suddenly appear out of it.
“Excuse me,” I hear, and it’s the other guy in reception, the one who nodded. I raise my eyebrows. “You’re here to see Mr. Towles? Sorry, I couldn’t help overhearing. It’s pretty quiet in here.”
He was only a few years older than me, probably, though he looked like a dad, like somebody’s dad. Very fit and tan, but not like someone who goes to the gym all the time. Like someone who’s outside a lot. But I was psyched when I realized what he was doing there.
“I have a meeting,” I said.
He stood, walked two steps forward—still kind of half-crouching, like he didn’t want to get all the way up—to shake my hand, then backed into his leather chair again. “Mark Firth,” he said, then he left a kind of pause, like I was supposed to tell him my name, which I didn’t. “I have a meeting too. Or I’m not sure if I still do. I had one scheduled for two days ago, but then, well.”
“Where are you from?” I said. “I’m surprised they let anybody into the city at all.”
You live in New York for a while, you develop a sense for when people are from someplace else. “I got here Monday night, if you can believe it,” he said. “I’m down from Massachusetts. I left my car up in Wassaic and took the train in from there. Mr. Towles had the firm put me up in a hotel. It was only supposed to be for one night, but now I don’t know.”
“Sweet,” I said.
He gave me kind of a look, like he was worried maybe I was making fun of him. But I wasn’t. “It’s possible to make the drive here and back in one day,” he said, “but it’s about four hours each way. I would have done it if I had to. But Greg was very generous about it.”
“I should have said I was from somewhere else,” I said, just trying to be friendly. “Free hotel room. That’s the shit.”
“So you’re from the city?” Mark Firth said, in a strange, kind of careful tone, like it was a big deal. “You live here in Manhattan?”
I nodded.
“So, um, is everyone—did you know anybody? Do you know anybody, I mean, who’s missing? Everyone close to you is okay?”
Everyone close to me? I actually misunderstood him for a second, because I said, “No, man, I was nowhere near it. I live miles away.”
He nodded, his head down, still looking all somber.
“It’s all so unbelievable,” he said.
I guess. He seemed pretty shaken up. I was waiting for him to start in on his own personal story of where he was when it happened, but he didn’t.
“So you don’t know anyone,” he said. “Anyone who worked down there.”
“Man,” I said, “do I look like someone with a lot of friends in high finance?”
He choked out a little laugh. “And you—I mean I guess I shouldn’t assume we’re here for the same reason, Mr. Towles has more than one case to work on at the same time I’m sure—”
“Garrett Spalding?” I said.
His shoulders sagged.
“Yeah,” I said, “me too. How much did he fuck you out of?”
“Oh,” Mark Firth said, “I’m not really sure if—maybe we’re not supposed to talk about that?”
I didn’t really care, I was just hoping that there’d been someone out there even stupider than me. If he didn’t want to say how much, I figured it must have been a lot. “Whatever,” I said, “we’re all on the same team, right? Team Gullible.” He smiled, kind of sickly. “Let me ask you this, though: did you ever meet him? Because I’m not sure I ever even met the guy, and I kind of regret it. Not to mention that it makes me feel like an even bigger idiot.”
Mark dropped his head. “Believe me,” he said, “it’s worse having met him.”
“No shit?” I sat forward, and he kind of sat back. “You met him?”
“I had him in my home.”
“You had him in your home?” I said, too loud for sure, and so when the hot receptionist pointed at us and some other little pale guy in a suit started toward us silently on the carpet, I figured it was to tell me to behave myself.
“What did he look like?” I said. “Did he have like a, like a—”
“You’re here to see Mr. Towles?” the suit said. He was balding and he had no chin.
“Yes, sir, that’s right,” Mark Firth said, polite as hell. He stood up again and said his name. “Do you happen to know if any of the others are here?”
“I don’t believe so,” the guy said. “Of course the depositions would all have been scheduled for different days and times.” I couldn’t tell yet if he was another lawyer, or just an assistant with a really positive opinion of himself. His head reminded me of a lightbulb.
“Well then, can we go in the back and see him now, if we’re not waiting for anybody else?” I said. “I came a long way to be here, and my fellow plaintiff Mark here came a lot further than I did.”
“I’m afraid not,” the little guy said. “He isn’t in.”
Great. “When do you expect him in?” Mark said.
“I’m not sure,” the guy said. He looked more and more rattled, the more he talked.
“What are you talking about, you’re not sure?” I said. “Where is he? We didn’t just wander in off the street, we’re here because he told us to be here. I had to take a day off work.”
Something in the little lackey dude seemed to crack, and he sat down in the seat that was more or less between us, so that we were like three sides of a square. Mark and I gave each other a look and sat down too. “These are frightening times,” Lightbulb Head said. “A lot of our staff isn’t in today. A lot of the lawyers too. Even though we’re officially open for business again. Some of them have friends or relatives who aren’t yet accounted for.”
“Oh my lord,” Mark said.
“And no one really knows what’s going to happen next,” he said. For some weird reason he had taken out his phone and was just kind of fondling it. “No one knows if whatever is going on in the world right now is over or not. So my point is that it’s not that unusual, not that hard to understand, that Mr. Towles and his wife have apparently left the city for a while. He has family somewhere on Long Island, and he’s gone to be with them.”
“So you don’t know when he’ll be back,” Mark said. “Or where he is, exactly.”
“A lot of people are panicking,” the guy said.
“Long Island,” I said. “And so us working folks are supposed to what, stay here and take our chances?”
The guy stared at me. The more impatient I got, the more h
e looked like he was about to cry. We sat there in our little open-ended square, on the fancy furniture that was just waiting-room furniture but that was ten times nicer than anything I’d ever owned. Just for the waiting room. I’d never really seen the inside of an operation like that before. Some people live in a world made of money. You think you know it, but you don’t know it.
“I don’t blame him,” Mark says, his voice as soft as the other guy’s. “It’s hard to be away from your family at a time like this. You want them close to you.”
Chinless reached out and put his hand on Mark’s arm, which was so inappropriate. Everybody was putting on an act, but not for each other, it was more like they were their own audience, if that even makes any sense.
“So can we still go inside then, since we’re here?” I said, and stood up. “Get deposed or whatever?”
The lackey looked miserable. “I’m sorry—”
Mark’s cell phone rang.
“Sorry,” he said. He pulled it out and muted it.
“I was just saying how sorry I was that only the two of you, out of six? I think it was six. That the two of you were scheduled when you were scheduled. I know it was hard to make it all the way down here. I know we all want life to go on just like before.” And the motherfucker is flat-out crying now. I just felt furious, for some reason. “But there’s no way we can take depositions without Mr. Towles here. And he isn’t here. And he’s left no word when he’ll be back. So I don’t know what to tell you except go home and be with your families and we’ll be in touch just as soon as there’s further word.”