She reached into her purse to fish out her BlackBerry.
She found the e-mail she’d seen earlier from Crowley Brown’s HR department titled “Transfers.”
For paralegals interested in transferring to other offices on a temporary or permanent basis, please contact your HR manager. The following offices presently have openings for first and second year paralegals:
Dubai
Shanghai (Mandarin required)
San Francisco
She forwarded the e-mail to her HR manager and typed in the body of the e-mail:
I’d like to be considered for San Francisco, please. Ready to leave immediately.
CHARLIE
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26; NEW YORK, NEW YORK
“We’ll take another round,” Johnny Walker told the bartender, without asking Charlie whether he wanted it.
Johnny, a slender, fashionable native New Yorker who did not find his name as amusing as his parents had thirty-three years earlier, worked at the New York Times, where he and Charlie had met as college interns. Johnny was the closest thing Charlie had to a best friend, though they normally only saw each other once a year, for drinks at the Distinguished Wakamba, a kitschy cocktail lounge in the Garment District that had become a journalist hang after an undercover cop killed an unarmed security guard on its doorstep and made it feel edgy.
“So are we going to talk about it?” Johnny finally asked, checking his watch as Charlie passed the second empty beer bottle back to the bartender and asked for another. It was the first evening he’d gotten out of his parents’ Brooklyn apartment since he’d flown back with them after Kelly’s services and he wanted it to last.
“It’s just strange to be on the other side,” Charlie confided.
“I’m sure.”
The press wouldn’t let go of Kelly’s overdose, or the platform it provided to argue over drugs in America. And the memorial fund Renee had started, despite all its good intentions, was just making it all worse, fueling a national debate over whether Kelly was a victim or a spoiled girl who’d squandered her opportunity.
Charlie sipped the fresh beer. “Do you think Sean Robinson’s right? About the white girl thing?”
As one of the few black reporters at the Times, Johnny was the go-to “racial issues” coverage person, a position he despised.
“I think they’re right that no one would be so concerned if it were a poor black kid that had died, but I doubt they’d care as much if she’d been an ugly white girl, either.” He studied Charlie’s face. “Come on, man, you know everyone is going to make this a platform for whatever they want. You can’t take it personally, you know that.”
“I just don’t get it,” he said. “She was a girl in college, not a public figure.”
“Welcome back to America.”
He was right: Charlie had forgotten how the American press worked. Amongst the many things he was struggling to readjust to, the prioritization of public interest in his sister’s death over the thousands that were happening in the Middle East was at the top of his list.
“How’s your mom doing?” Johnny asked.
“Terribly.” Charlie shook his head. “You know they talked every single day? Kelly called my mother every single day. I think I called my parents once a semester when I was in college.”
Johnny sipped his beer. He was one of the most talented guys Charlie knew, but had never gotten the recognition he deserved. It would have been so easy to break through by playing the race angle, but Johnny wouldn’t do it. He refused to let an agenda drive his work, or be tempted by the salability of sensationalism.
“I think she was murdered,” Charlie said quietly.
Johnny’s eyes snapped up. “What?”
Charlie took another sip of his beer before he delivered the facts he’d carefully collected to form the narrative he now believed.
“Her friends only saw her take one hit of Molly. All of them took from the same batch and were fine, so there wasn’t anything bad in it,” he reported. “Her friend Renee said it took them an hour and a half to get back to campus from the concert, and that Kelly was fine when she put her to bed. So even if Kelly had found and taken more drugs from someone else at the concert, which I find hard to believe, it would have kicked in while she was in the car and Renee would have noticed.”
Charlie could feel his friend studying his face, trying to decide whether Charlie himself was being logical or was under the influence of his own desire to see his sister as pure.
“The toxicology report showed that there was more than one hit in her system,” Johnny said carefully.
“I know. I think she must have taken it after Renee left.”
“That doesn’t make it murder.”
“I found a water bottle in her stuff, and it has a powder residue in it that I think is Molly.”
“That still doesn’t make it murder.”
“Why would my sister have woken up to sit in her room by herself and drink a water bottle laced with Molly?”
“Maybe it was suicide,” Johnny said softly.
Charlie shook his head. “She was happy.”
“How do you know?”
“I talked to her that day,” he admitted. “She was upset with me, but she wasn’t suicidal.”
“But the drugs—the comedown—”
“Takes two days, not two hours.”
“Do you know who she was sleeping with?”
“I think it was either this kid Luis, who gave her the drugs at the concert, or her RA.”
Johnny waited. Charlie continued, knowing the impact his words would have.
“Renee said she locked the door when she left Kelly. The RA, Robby, was the only one with a key. And according to the doctor, he was still drunk in the morning when he brought her to the hospital, which means he must have been completely blacked out when she died.”
“So you think he had something to do with it?”
“I think someone should ask.”
“You can’t get involved.” Johnny shook his head. “Families getting involved never helps.”
“I know.”
“Are you asking me to write something?”
Charlie shrugged, looking down at his hands.
“You know this would make my career, right? Breaking a story like this?”
“I know you’ll treat it fairly.”
“But it’ll make the attention that much worse. The punditry now will be nothing compared to—”
“I know,” Charlie interrupted.
“Who else should I talk to?”
“I pulled some numbers from her phone.” Charlie handed Johnny a piece of paper with the names and contact information he’d written down. “I’d start with Renee Schultz, Luis Guerrera and Robby Goodman.”
Johnny checked his watch.
“Go,” Charlie said, knowing he wanted to get working on the story.
“Are you sure you’ll be okay?”
“Yeah,” he said.
Johnny left and Charlie ordered another beer. It was the right thing to do, he reminded himself. If the media insisted on judging his sister, he was going to make sure she came out clean.
He pulled Kelly’s phone out of his pocket and looked at the call log from the day she died for the dozenth time. He hadn’t told Johnny about the other number—the 212 area code she’d called that afternoon. He held his breath and dialed it.
“L.Cecil, Tara Taylor’s line,” a woman said.
Charlie felt the flood of relief, laughing at his fear the number belonged to a drug dealer. “Oh, I must have the wrong—” he started, but changed his mind, suddenly curious who Kelly would have worked with. “Actually, yes, could I speak with Tara, please?”
“She’s at a client event, but I can give you her e-mail?”
“Sure,” Charlie said, “l
et me get a pen.”
TARA
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26; NEW YORK, NEW YORK
A man unhooked the red velvet rope as cameras flashed, and Tara lifted the skirt of her long purple gown, conscious of the curious gaze of the pedestrians who’d paused in the cold at the Frick’s entrance to determine the cause of all the commotion.
Tara hadn’t thought about anything other than Hook for the past three weeks. She got up at five, went for a run, was in the office by seven and stayed until midnight every day, only registering whether it was a weekday or the weekend by how crowded the twenty-seventh floor was when she left the conference room to go to the restroom. She’d been excused from all office- or team-wide meetings, and had finally put an Out of Office automated response on her personal e-mail so she could feel less guilty about being completely unresponsive to any of her friends. The country could have gone to war and she wasn’t sure she’d have noticed.
But tonight, she was entering the world again: she was going to have a drink and be social and show Catherine that she wasn’t just the kind of woman who could put her head down and work, she was also the kind of woman who could socialize with clients and sell them on the firm’s merits.
She posed for a photograph with Beau, who was here as a benefactor rather than a corporate representative, and realized she’d forgotten to line her eyebrows. She chided herself for the neglect: how had she forgotten something so simple? She felt the anxiety that she wasn’t in fact the woman who could work hard and do well at events start to swell and she pushed it away. She’d make a checklist when she got home of all the things she needed to remember to do when she got ready before these things, and then she wouldn’t forget.
Tara followed the entrance lights through a mirrored hall, instinctively checking to be sure she didn’t look fat. Her dress was cut on the bias, a swath of deep plum silk that crossed her right shoulder and gathered at her left hip, leaving a slit open for her leg to peek out when she walked. It was four years old, but it felt appropriately edgy for a gala supporting the currently-trending-on-Twitter artist George E.
She plucked a champagne flute off a passing silver tray and wandered through the Garden Court. Oversized party lights were strung around the ceiling, illuminating bouquets of rich burgundy roses and the glass panes of the roof and side wall, where white snow whirled and collected in the corners. She felt the bubbles from the champagne sweep up into her brain and she reminded herself to take it slow.
“Don’t you look lovely.” She turned at the voice and smiled when she saw Terrence.
“What are you doing here?” she said brightly, kissing him on either cheek. Another person she hadn’t seen for weeks.
“Investor relating.” He smiled. “One of the patrons is a rich gay, so L.Cecil sent me in to swoon him.”
Tara laughed. “Do you feel used?”
“Not if it gets me a rich husband.”
“I should learn to think more like you,” she said.
“I trust the deal is going well?” Terrence asked.
“Yeah,” Tara said. “We filed the S-1 today, which is a huge relief.”
“That was quick,” he said. “No wonder I haven’t seen you.”
“You know I literally have not been outside during daylight hours? It’s terrifying,” she said, “but I’m really happy.” She added, “I feel like things are finally happening, you know?”
Terrence smiled and nodded. “I’m proud of you.”
He clinked her glass and she felt the warmth of his honesty.
Dinner was announced and Tara and Terrence meandered with the crowd into the alcove where tables were set.
“Don’t turn now, but there’s a man over there staring at you,” Terrence bent down and whispered to her.
“What?” Tara said, turning automatically. “Where?”
“By the staircase,” he said, “next to the supermodel.”
Tara’s face went white when she saw Callum Rees. He lifted his champagne flute to say hello and she blinked, willing her jaw to close and blushing furiously as she smiled back and nodded her own hello.
“Shit,” she said to Terrence.
“Who is that?”
“Callum Rees,” she said. Now Terrence turned back to stare.
“That’s Callum Rees?” he said. “Like billionaire investor Callum Rees?”
“Yeah,” she said. “And I’m guessing that is his current squeeze,” she added, hoping the disappointment didn’t come through in her voice. The woman with Callum probably was an actual supermodel: tall and hyper-skinny, wearing some designer dress. She definitely hadn’t forgotten to line her eyebrows.
“Why is he staring at you?” Terrence asked suspiciously.
“Because he’s an investor in Hook and he wants me to sell his shares so that he can make a billion dollars,” she said, knowing once and for all that that was the extent of it. He hadn’t ever followed up after their drinks at the Crosby. Not that he needed to, but the absence of a note had made her confront the fact that she’d been expecting one.
“I love his date’s dress,” Terrence said, still looking back at them. “It’s Valentino, right?”
“I don’t know,” Tara said, taking a gulp of her champagne, the four-years-ago-ness of her own dress burning her skin.
She found her table at the center front of the atrium and took a deep breath, running through the client bios Catherine’s assistant had sent her. She was to be seated between Rick Frier, a self-made real estate developer famous for his conservative politics, and David Dwight, the CFO of Wyatt, one of the investment bank’s largest clients, whose son was in rehab, making parenting an off-limits conversation topic.
She found her seat and checked her BlackBerry to look occupied while the table filled.
“You clean up nicely.” She turned to Callum’s voice as he pulled out the chair next to her and took a seat.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I wanted to see you,” he said, as if that were a perfectly good reason.
“Well that seat is for—”
“I got David to switch with me,” Callum said without further explanation. “This is Katerina,” he said, introducing his date.
“Tara,” she said, careful not to crush Katerina’s skinny hand.
“Tara is my favorite investment banker,” Callum explained to the woman. Or was she a girl? She looked like she was barely legal, despite clearly being jaded by events like this one.
“I get the impression I’m beating a low bar,” Tara said, trying to calm her racing heart and adjust to this new situation.
Callum plucked a glass of white wine off a waiter’s tray and put it in front of Tara. “I know you’re new to these things,” he said, “but trust me, the best approach is to get very, very drunk.”
“I’m representing L.Cecil,” she said, wondering why he hadn’t handed his date a glass of wine.
“And, as a major prospect of the firm, it is your duty to impress me, and I will be most impressed if you keep pace with my drinking,” he said, lifting a glass. “And I intend to drink a lot.”
She looked at him carefully. His hazel eyes were bright. She finally matched his grin, getting it: he wanted to be friends. He was giving her the chance to have the same friendly, drink-together, client/banker relationship that men like Todd had with their clients.
“Rick Frier,” a fat, balding man announced himself at her opposite side.
Tara stood from her chair, startled. “Tara Taylor,” she said. “It’s so nice to meet you.”
“Same,” he said gruffly as he sat down. “Do you know Mr. Lewis?” he indicated the man at his side.
“Of course,” the man answered for her. “Tara Taylor is in our investment bank.” The man smiled broadly at Rick Frier, revealing a set of large and unnaturally whitened teeth. “The private bank works clos
ely with the investment bank when our clients have capital needs for their businesses. It’s another advantage of working with a large, integrated institution like L.Cecil.”
Rick rolled his eyes. Tara bit her lip to hide a laugh. She’d never met John Lewis, but he fit the private-wealth-manager stereotype: charismatic, overly enthusiastic WASPs who enjoyed rubbing elbows with rich people enough to dedicate their careers to opening checking accounts for them.
Someone tapped a microphone and the crowd quieted, turning to the podium, where a young woman had taken the stage.
The girl at the podium could only be twenty, a clear product of the Upper East Side: her soft blonde hair was swept up into an intricate knot at her neck; her youthful skin glowed with professionally applied bronzer.
“Hi, everyone,” she started nervously, batting her eyelashes in the light, clearly accustomed to attention but not the kind earned by speaking. “I want to thank you all for coming tonight. I am so excited you’re here to celebrate our newest exhibit, featuring George E . . .”
“Catherine’s daughter,” Callum whispered to Tara.
“How do you know?”
“And Catherine’s husband.” Callum pointed across the room to a man in a tuxedo at the bar, taking a shot with the bartender, not paying attention to the stage. “I was a groomsman in their wedding.”
Tara paused and turned. “You know Catherine?”
“Would be very strange if I’d been in her wedding and didn’t, wouldn’t it?”
“I didn’t—” Her brain raced: Had she said anything foolish at the Crosby when they’d talked about it? Why hadn’t he mentioned it then? “Do you know where she is?” Tara whispered, indicating the empty seat across the table.
“Guessing she’s at work.” Callum shrugged. “She usually finds an excuse.”
Catherine’s daughter approached the table.
“Well done,” Callum told the girl, who was clearly happy to see him.
“I’m so glad it’s over,” the girl said, letting Callum kiss her on the cheek.
“Lauren, this is Katerina,” Callum said, introducing the woman to his left. “And this is Tara—she works at L.Cecil, for your mother.”
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