It Happened at Two in the Morning

by Alan Hruska

  “Good.” She wafts her small hand upward, apparently delivering their tea orders to some unseen minion, perhaps the young man. “I dislike dealing with fundamentalists.”

  “I’m a man of my faith,” he says, smiling, “but my faith can be as sophisticated as the next one. For example, I believe that you, Mrs. Harding, are Catholic. Yet you are also an intellectual and a member of the various boards that run the Church’s business affairs in this city. As a result, you are permitted to read indexed books, which would be a great sin for people of a different class.”

  “And you’re permitted whiskey.”

  “On occasion.”

  “What else are you permitted?”

  “I can read anything I like.”

  “Such as the financials of my company.”

  “Naturally.”

  “Which you’ve of course done,” she says.

  “I hope diligently.”

  “And what have you concluded, Mr. al-Calif?”

  “Would it trouble you to call me Rashid?”

  “Not in the least,” she says with a laugh, but without sign of reciprocating.

  “I’ve concluded,” Rashid says, “that your company could be making more money than it does.”

  “And why would I wish it to do that?” she asks.

  “For the benefit of your stockholders. And it’s the way business is done.”

  “Not my business,” she says. “Which my stockholders know. Or should have when they bought into it.”

  “Perhaps they bought … to retire you from the fray.”

  “Like you and Lowell?”

  “Actually,” he says “we thought you might like to stay on in some capacity.”

  “Be a figurehead, you mean.”

  “Chairman of the board, is what we were thinking.”

  “Chairman?”

  “A figure of speech,” he says. “But surely not a figurehead position. You could help guide the corporate mission.”

  “Oh, I love words like that. Mission! So now, so fashionable, so corporate hip.”

  “I said something wrong?”

  “You slip rather easily,” she says, “into the institutional version of the politically correct. Next you’ll be telling me about ‘community’ and ‘diversity.’”

  “We would be achieving that.”

  “Your folks all being Arabs.”

  “Not necessarily. And not Lowell’s, in all probability.”

  “Look, Mr. al-Calif. I can well understand why you and doubtless others have chosen to put my company in play. But it won’t be an easy conquest. I do own a controlling interest.”

  “Not, however, a majority interest,” he points out. “The funds and institutions—who do converse in the language you find objectionable—may, nonetheless, be more inclined to maximize profits than to do good.”

  “And I’m perceived as a do-gooder?”

  Rashid bows his head.

  “Any good that I do,” says Mrs. Harding, “is entirely accidental. I have a much simpler ‘mission.’ To have fun. And turning the company over to you boys would doubtless get in the way of that. Do you know, I co-founded this company with my husband.”

  “We are prepared to pay you very handsomely for your shares. Twenty-five points over market, which is already inflated by our recent purchases of stock.”

  “He ran it,” she says, ostensibly ignoring the offer, “but consulting with me at every step. Meaningfully consulting. And so when he died—”

  “Thirty points over market?”

  “Do you have any idea who I am?”

  “Forty-eight points. Our limit. Which comes to twelve point three billion dollars.”

  “I’ve asked you a non-rhetorical question.”

  “The thirteenth-richest woman in the world? It is not a lucky number. We would be delighted to move you into seventh place.”

  “And you think I care?” she says. “Tell me something … Rashid. Lowell and you … or whomever the UAE wants to send here to run things—how in the world do you plan to coexist, much less co-manage?”

  “Why would you think we’d have to?” he asks.

  She tries to read his impassive face. “I see. You now have a deal about that? One of you is really the banker and will step aside after the takeover?”

  “All things are possible,” he says.

  “Like Lowell doesn’t know he’s to move aside? You’re just planning to screw him?”

  He looks horrified. “Sell out a partner? How would I do that?”

  “If the end doesn’t trouble you, Rashid, I’m sure you’ll have no problem figuring out the means.”

  In Elena’s tiny one-bedroom apartment, Tom, in his customary shorts, plunks down on the living room sofa. Elena, in the kitchenette, near the front door, inspects the dubious contents of containers she’s just retrieved from the fridge. Tom says, “You live pretty frugally for a rich kid.”

  Looking up, Elena says, “You might put some clothes on.”

  “I might, despite the condition they’re in. And in time, which we seem to have lots of.” Rising, he plucks the shirt he wore the day before off a nearby side chair and takes a cautionary whiff. “Ugh,” he says.

  “You must have some clothes someplace.”

  “Of course. In the apartment I was living in before”—he spreads his hands out—“you.”

  “Is it empty?”

  “I doubt it. The rent was paid.”

  “By you?”

  “Naturally. She’s an actress.”

  “You’re saying she’s likely to be there, sponging?”

  “Sponging, well …” he says, “… rent having been paid, she’s on her own, I’m not showing up.…”

  “But if you did, she’d leave?”

  “What are you thinking? You want me out of here?”

  “You couldn’t possibly be comfortable sleeping on that sofa again,” Elena says.

  Tom glances down at this piece of furniture—still sagging forlornly with his impression, colors fading in the morning sun—then up to her.

  “Don’t look at me that way,” she says.

  He continues to do so.

  “With blaming eyes,” she says.

  “Not my idea last night, that sofa.”

  “We should split up,” she says.

  “We made a deal with the DA,” Tom says. “We stay in one apartment.”

  “Because he thinks we’re a couple. We should disabuse him of that, renegotiate the deal.”

  “We could try. Probably wouldn’t work, though. Takes fewer of their men to keep watch over one apartment.”

  She slumps dejectedly onto the sofa. The room, twelve by fifteen, looks like it might have been decorated during a half-hour spree at Pottery Barn, or even less time on the retailer’s website. Her one remarkable possession is an Egon Schiele print, which looks real, hanging in isolation on the opposite wall. The apartment is on the sixth floor of an old building, with a large window overlooking Broadway and Eighty-First Street. Elena is dressed in jeans and a polo shirt. Tom is still standing there in his shorts.

  “They’ve got the door padlocked,” she says, sounding disheartened.

  “And,” he adds, “they’ve taken an empty apartment right below this one. I saw them moving in this morning. They’ve gone to a lot of trouble.”

  “Shit.”

  He says, “Do you really want me to leave?”

  “Yes,” she says. “I don’t like the pressure.”

  “What … pressure?”

  “Don’t be dense.”

  He stares at her; she looks away.

  “The pressure,” he says, “is self-imposed.”

  “Forget it. We have bigger problems. There’s nothing to eat.”

  “Absolutely nothing left in the fridge?”

  “We ate it all last night,” she says. “The food that’s not spoiled, I mean.”

  “The deal is, we call, and they’ll go shopping for us. Or pick up takeout.”

  “
I can’t believe this,” she says. “We’re total prisoners? We can’t even go shopping?”

  He sits next to her on the sofa. “I noticed a fire escape out your bedroom window. Goes down to an alley that leads into the street, which you can see from here.”

  She turns to face him. “You game for that?”

  He shrugs. “Starts the manhunt again.”

  “Where would we go?”

  He thinks. “New Jersey?”

  “Shit.”

  “We barely have enough money to get there.”

  “Dammit, Tom, I’m starving again! Since I met you, I’ve constantly been hungry.”

  “Let’s give them a shopping list,” he says. “Just for now.”

  “I don’t want to wait. I want to climb down that fire escape.” She jumps off the sofa and darts by him to the large window. He watches her peer out, then return with a disconsolate face. “They’re in a car out there.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “You don’t believe me? Look for yourself.”

  He does look. Black car, two men, drinking coffee.

  “All right,” he says. “Let me get some clothes on.”

  “You have another plan?”

  “We go down the fire escape.”

  “Great,” she says. “And then what?”

  “I’ll think of something on the way down.”

  A knock on the front door startles both of them.

  “You expecting visitors?” Tom says.

  Then the sound of someone opening a lock.

  She jumps up to peer through the peephole. “It’s that guy we met with last night. The DA. Skillan.”

  “He can hear you, El,” Tom says, getting into his pants. “Just open the door.”

  She does with a shrug, confronts Skillan and says, “You didn’t put enough food in the fridge.”

  “You won’t be needing it,” Mike says.

  “Going to hang us right now, are you?” she says.

  “Why don’t the both of you sit down?”

  Tom says, “May we offer you some hospitality? The water here’s terrific.”

  “Just sit the fuck down, Weldon. I’ve something to tell you.”

  Elena says, “I’ll tell you where we’ll sit down. There’s a coffee shop on Eighty-Second. We’ll sit there. Eating breakfast.”

  “Great,” says Mike. “That’s exactly what I had in mind.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  In a half-empty diner, the breakfast crowd mostly gone, Elena attacks an egg white omelet with spinach; Tom, two fried eggs and bacon. Mike, sipping coffee, does the talking. “I’m indicting you,” he says, “because I have no choice. On the one hand, the evidence against you is overwhelming. On the other hand, it’s the only way I can let you go free.”

  Tom says, “Those sound like contradictory propositions.”

  “I know.” He eyes Tom’s fried eggs enviously.

  “So, in effect, you’re saying you won’t oppose our bail application?”

  “Token opposition. The judges know the difference.”

  “But not the newspapers,” Tom says.

  “Probably right.”

  “So you’re covered with the press.”

  Mike shrugs.

  Elena says, with a mouth full of omelet, “But you do believe we’re innocent.”

  “I haven’t said that. What I believe is that there are two possibilities. Either you’re much better con artists than I’m inclined to give you credit for, or someone’s doing an excellent job of fabricating evidence against you.”

  “In other words,” Tom says, “you’re inclined to believe we’re innocent.”

  “I do not know, Weldon. That’s the blunt fact. But I’m likely to learn more by setting you free than I am by putting you in jail. And I risk very little. If you run again, you’re guilty. And it probably wouldn’t take too much digging this time to root you out.”

  “How ’bout if we’re killed?”

  “Then we’ll know you’re innocent.”

  “Great,” Tom says. “But not if we disappear.”

  “We’ll try to prevent that.” The voice is soothing; the assurance is not.

  “Tell me this,” Tom says. “I’ve heard on the news that you have telephone company records of my having called Elena. Those records are phony—I’d never met Elena before in my life, nor had I any idea of her existence—but that’s not my point. The DA’s office does not voluntarily release evidence of that kind before trial, much less before an indictment.”

  “Very true.”

  “So there’s a leak. Probably same guy who’s feeding info, as I said last night.”

  “I agree with that,” Mike says.

  “And you’re doing something about it?”

  “What do you think?”

  Elena looks up from her now empty plate. “Why did you change your mind from last night? About us? About letting us go free?”

  A waitress refills Mike’s coffee, and he empties a packet of sugar substitute into the brew. “You’ve been following the news about Riles Whitney getting into a hostile takeover war?”

  “I saw it this morning, yeah,” Elena says.

  “As I understand it,” Mike says, “you now own a controlling interest in your dad’s company.”

  “And?” says Elena. “What? That makes me no longer a suspect?”

  “You’re still a suspect, but now you’re useful. Well, possibly useful.”

  Tom says, “You’ve finally figured out that the murder was motivated by some element of corporate greed, such as this takeover battle.”

  “Possibly motivated,” Mike says. “Unfortunately, many businessmen here and abroad had many motives for.…” He spreads his hands apologetically.

  “Killing my dad,” Elena says, keeping her face calm.

  “Sorry,” Mike says, “but yes.”

  Tom says, “I doubt if it’s that simple.”

  “Oh?” Mike asks with a raised eyebrow. “You’ve got a theory?”

  “Working on it. But if it is another corporate raider or such, what you’re looking for is the borderline psychotic. The pathologically narcissistic. The guy who thinks whatever he does is right simply because he does it.”

  “Not sure that narrows the field much, but great,” Mike says. “Let’s find him.”

  “You want Elena to spy for you?” Tom says.

  “Both of you, actually. You come in as her lawyer. No one has a bigger stake in this takeover than she. So no one has more right to the facts. And no one in my office has better legal training than you to understand what’s happening. So to be honest, you’re a good team for us. Also, very highly motivated.”

  Tom thinks about this while Elena steals a slice of his toast and butters it. They eat for a moment in silence.

  Mike says to Elena, “How well do you know Julian Althus?”

  Tom says, “He’s a suspect?”

  “You know him too?” Mike asks.

  “Done some work for him, yeah. He had a motive, of course, but—”

  “It’s not him,” Elena says quickly.

  “Why you so sure?”

  She shakes her head emphatically.

  “Not the type?” Mike says ironically, not really trusting such judgments.

  “Why do you suspect him?” Tom says. “Apart from the motive?”

  “Tip. From an anonymous source.”

  “And you trust him?”

  “I don’t even know him. Call came into one of my team, just saying, ‘While you’re watching, watch him.’”

  They’re on the street, on Broadway, after Skillan leaves them to themselves. Traffic is grinding. A siren blares blocks away. People rush by, different ages and races. They know where they’re going and anxious to get there. Unlike Elena and Tom. She says, “What do we do now?” The sudden freedom is as bewildering as the sun’s glare in their eyes.

  “We?” he asks, as if that were the important question.

  “You heard him, right? You’re my lawy
er. We poke around at Riles Whitney. It’s in our interest.”

  “I heard one thing loud and clear,” he says. “We disappear, we’re guilty. Alive or dead. That’s how they’ll read it.” The implications sink in, which creates a pocket of silence.

  “So we’re targets again,” she says. “It’s in the best interests of whoever to kill us.”

  “I should think,” he says. “Even more, now.”

  “He obviously sees that, Skillan … but he didn’t offer us protection. You think he doesn’t care whether we get killed?”

  “I don’t know,” Tom says. “Might make his job easier. Another crime, more clues. Or an easier solution. Just go with the flow, pin it on us. And since he will have opposed our bail applications….”

  “We have to hide,” she says quickly. “In the city. Be seen during the day, in public, maybe at Riles Whitney—so it’s obvious we haven’t run—but otherwise stay hidden.”

  “I’ve got a better idea,” he says. “We split up. You get your own protection. A security firm. There are good ones. Twenty-four hours a day.”

  “Leaving you out there.”

  “They don’t want me.”

  “Why not?” she says. “Takes them off the hook for murder. You disappear, you’re the one who did it. And if they can blame it on you, that implicates me.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “I’ve already said it,” she says.

  “We stay together?”

  She looks up at him impatiently.

  “Half hour ago,” he says, “you were trying to get rid of me.”

  “Facts have changed.”

  “No they haven’t,” he says.

  “Don’t badger me on this!”

  “Okay,” he says. “What are the arrangements?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Me on the sofa?”

  Her look turns fierce.

  “I’m not sleeping on the sofa,” he says.

  “Jesus!” she says. “This again?”

  “What’s the ‘this’?”

  “The ‘this’ is this goddamn negotiation! This pressure! About our having sex is the fucking ‘this’!”

  “Making love, you mean?”

  “Christ, Tom! We’re on fucking Broadway!”

  “Am I on the fucking sofa or in the bed?”

  “There are people here!”

  “Am I on the—”