Too Close to Home

by Andrew Grant

  “We’re both busy men, so I’ll keep this concise. To avoid an extended stay in jail, Bruce needs to provide the DA with the names of six people he facilitated bribes for to have their criminal cases dropped. Some were relatively trivial, so they’re off the table. Yours, however—solicitation of minors—fits the bill nicely.”

  “This is a shakedown, right?” Wilkinson opened a drawer and took out his checkbook. “How much to leave my name out, and move on to the next on the list?”

  “The actual number will be Bruce’s call. My job was just to see if you were amenable.”

  “Of course I’m fucking amenable, given the alternative. I’m not happy, though. Tell the bastard I’ll be in touch and we’ll set a time and place to meet.”

  “I can tell you the time and place.” I looked at my watch. “In twelve minutes, at the Egg. Bruce has a nice private space lined up for you two to chat.”

  “Twelve minutes?” Wilkinson slammed his checkbook closed. “That’s too soon. I need time to compose myself, think this through, before I see him in person.”

  I gestured to Wilkinson’s computer screen. “I can see you like numbers, Howard, so here are some to think about. The DA wants six names. Bruce has ruled out all but eight. You’re one of those. So imagine it this way. You’re on the Titanic. The water’s rising. Fast. There are two spots left in the final lifeboat. Do you want to get on board? Or would you prefer to take your chances with the icebergs?”

  Wilkinson clenched his fists, pressed them to his temples, and closed his eyes. Then he banged the desk with both hands. “Fine. Where in the Egg? That place is huge, and it’s like a maze inside. And how am I supposed to get there?”

  “You’re supposed to walk. It’s not unusual. People have been doing it for millennia.” I stood up. “Come on. If we leave now, we’ll make it on time. I’ll show you which elevator you need.”

  * * *

  —

  The Egg’s concrete shell seemed a little paler than the last time I’d stood on it because the sun was higher in the sky. Wilkinson blinked as he took his first couple of steps out onto the crunchy surface, then dropped to his knees when it dawned on him where he was. He spun around and tried to scuttle back to the elevator, but Robson stepped across and blocked his path to the hatch.

  “I hope you’re not one of those pedantic-type guys who gets all bent out of shape about being taken places on false pretenses.” I waited for Wilkinson to stop moving. “That would just make everything take longer, and I don’t know about you, but I’d like to get back down to the ground as quickly as possible. And as safely as possible.”

  “I hate heights.” Wilkinson’s voice was strangled and tight. “I’ll pay whatever Steve wants. Just let me go back down, right now.”

  “Pay attention, Howard. You’re not keeping up. The Bruce thing was just a ruse to get you up here. Now that we are here, we’re going to discuss something else.”

  “Anything. Just make it quick.”

  “I understand you’re friends with Jimmy Klinsman?”

  “Yes. So?”

  “He shorted some stock, recently, in a company that makes things for telecom networks. Why did he do that?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “You seem like an educated kind of guy. I wonder if you could clear something up for me that I’ve always wondered about. People say that if you fall from a great height, like the height we’re at now, for example, you’re dead before you hit the ground. Is that true, do you think? I kind of hope it is, given the speed you’d fall. How hard you’d hit the ground. The mess you’d make. Imagine if you were conscious when you smashed into the sidewalk.”

  “I can’t tell you. Please, let me go down. I’ll pay you.”

  “Are you one of those guys who thinks there’s a certain cachet to being the first to do something? Because I’m not sure that anyone’s ever committed suicide by jumping off from here, before. Think of the splash—or should that be splat?—you’d make in the newspapers, and online. People would wonder why you’d done it. All your secrets would come out. It would be embarrassing for your family, but I’m sure the public would understand. The whole underage thing being about to come out—who could live with that? And you never know, your name might even be immortalized. In the future, any time a pervert kills himself out of shame, people will say he’s done ‘a Wilkinson.’ ”

  “OK! I’ll tell you. It was just a game.”

  “Klinsman short-sells shares as a game?”

  “Shorting’s one way you can play.”

  “What are the other ways?”

  “Anything you can think of. There aren’t any rules.”

  “So what’s the point of this game?”

  “Each person nominates a company. The one who causes the biggest fall in its value wins.”

  “Why?”

  “What else is left? Anyone can spot shares that are going to rise. We’ve been doing that forever. We needed a new challenge. Something different.”

  “How do you make money from it?”

  “We don’t. It’s just for fun.”

  “Who’s involved?”

  “Six of us. We meet every quarter or so.”

  “And you don’t care about the damage you do? The harm you cause?”

  “Who to?”

  I was struggling with the irony. I’d finally found something that wasn’t about pure profit, and it was just as disgusting. If not worse. And I was struggling with Wilkinson’s position on the surface of the Egg. One little push with my foot and he’d be rolling inexorably toward the edge…

  I took a moment to refocus. “OK. You said there were no rules to this game you play. Meaning no one would balk at using information that wasn’t common knowledge?”

  “Of course not. We do that all the time.”

  “So you know where to get that kind of information?”

  “I have my sources.”

  “Good. In that case, we’re going to try a different kind of game. There’s a real prize to be won with this one. Something you can’t put a price on. A ride down in the elevator.”

  Wilkinson whimpered.

  “Concentrate, now. This isn’t hard. To win, all you have to do is give me the correct answer to one simple question. Ready? Are you going to (a) introduce me to your friends; (b) get me the name of a company whose shares you know for sure are going to rise, but the others don’t; (c) tell no one about our arrangement; or (d) all of the above?”

  Anna Valentina strode into the motel room like she owned it.

  It was the way she’d been taught. It was an entire concept she’d been taught. And it still felt strange to her—alien—after twenty-five years of life with her mother and her sisters in an apartment that was generously provided by the state. That apartment was much nicer than the place she was in now. She hoped she’d see it again, but she knew deep down how unlikely a prospect that was.

  Things would be different if she’d had the same aptitudes as the rest of the family. Then she’d have been free to walk to the factory with them. Have lunch with them. Walk home again, as part of a group. Do things together, in familiar surroundings. She wouldn’t be waiting, alone, in a foreign land. Not that she resented it. She accepted her fate happily. You take according to your needs, and you contribute according to your abilities. Anna had few needs. But she had prodigious abilities. That wasn’t a claim she made for herself. She hadn’t even realized, at first, that it was the reason the people from Moscow started coming to watch her ballet lessons. Sitting in on her language classes. Why they sent her to camp to learn geography. To speak English with an American accent. And to kill without breaking a sweat.

  Her skills meant moving to a new continent. Adopting a new identity. Never speaking her real name. Never revealing the truth to anyone she met. And she was content with all that. Happy, in f
act, because she knew she was helping to make the world a better place.

  She crossed to the air conditioner and switched it on. She knew how. She could have operated it in her sleep. Or sabotaged it. Or used it to conceal weapons, or matériel. She knew the controls and inner workings of every make and model by heart, though she had no desire to chill any air. She despised the machines. They were for the weak. But a westerner would use it, so she had to as well. It was vital to fit in. She moved to the mirror hanging over the dresser. She knew that vanity was bad, and she rejected it. But honestly, this was the worst part. They wouldn’t allow her to cut her hair, so it was now impractically long with a stupid center part. Her face was so plump she hardly recognized herself after all the months of being forced to eat hot dogs and hamburgers. Her makeup was gross and slutty. Her blouse was flowery and cut so low as to be immodest. Her mother would be shocked. No wonder unwanted pregnancy rates were so high here. And then there were the jeans she had to wear. They were tight at the top, which was fine, but lower down there was a ridiculous amount of fabric. The more efficient factories at home could have used it to make three pairs. They looked ridiculous, too. And people here wore them out of choice! She supposed she shouldn’t be surprised, though. It was simply another step on the path toward the inevitable collapse that every decadent society must face.

  She carried her bag to the bed. It was a Yankees duffel. She could name every player on the roster for the last decade. Discuss the key points in all the most contentious games. Offer opinions on managers and opponents. List the food for sale in the concession stands. Justify her preference for certain seats. Bemoan the shortfall in public transportation. She’d learned all of this without ever setting foot in the state, let alone the stadium. And she’d done it in record time, because her original posting was supposed to be Washington. It had been changed at the last minute. She didn’t know why. But she did know better than to ask.

  She unzipped the bag and took out a book. The Thorn Birds, by Colleen McCullough. She’d bought it at the airport after she landed. She had no personal interest in reading it whatsoever—give her Bulgakov or Leonov, any day—but she knew it was important to be thorough. It was evidently the sort of thing that was popular, so she’d need a working knowledge in order to not stand out. She lay down and plowed through fifty pages in half an hour. The speed-reading technique she’d learned was finally coming in useful, and it was nice not to have a test at the end, like with the tractor maintenance manuals they’d practiced on. When she felt she’d built a decent foundation, she put the book down and crossed to the window. She wondered how long she’d have to wait. For her equipment to be delivered. And for her “husband.”

  Anna had grown up without a father, so she’d given little thought to ever having a husband. She was aware of them. Most women had one. Some did not. The ones who didn’t seemed no less satisfied in life. She’d never really cared which way it would work out for her, though on balance she’d assumed it was more likely that she would end up with one than she wouldn’t. She’d never spared much thought as to how she’d acquire one. Though she’d certainly never imagined a husband would be issued to her, like a gun or a cyanide pill. Mikhail—or Misha, as he said he liked to be called—was introduced to her during the final phase of her training in Leningrad. The couple was required to spend two weeks together, so that they wouldn’t look like strangers to other people when they were finally deployed.

  They spent fourteen days together, anyway. They returned to their barracks at night. Their segregated barracks. Anna wandered across to the bed now, flopped down onto her back, and stretched out her arms. They barely reached the sides. It was the biggest bed she’d ever been in. She wondered if it would be the first one she wouldn’t sleep in alone. Not counting her sisters, of course. She wondered if Misha would try anything. He better not. She had been trained in certain arts, naturally. She’d received high marks. But she was clear that she was only going to use them when it was necessary to further a mission. Not for the pleasure of a pimply asshole from Ukraine whose breath stank of potatoes.

  Brian Rooney was drowning. That was clear.

  It was so clear that eight weeks into the program, the academy instructors had him down as third favorite out of a class of seventy-eight to drop out. Rooney didn’t know it, but there was enough money to buy a small car or a long vacation riding on his woeful performance. It wasn’t just one area that was letting him down. In isolation he could post satisfactory scores in his fitness tests. Or with firearms. The proper operation of his vehicle. Even the basics of criminal law. The problem came when he tried to put all these things together. The volume of work was overwhelming. And he wasn’t helped by the academy’s study requirements. Specifically, note taking. All the cadets were required to maintain their notebooks in a particular way. The format had to be neat. And the content, comprehensive. Rooney had big hands. That was good when it came to punching people. Good for wielding a nightstick. But bad for handwriting. He was very slow. When he tried to keep up in the classroom, where he was supposed to record everything verbatim, his clarity suffered. If he concentrated on his presentation, he fell further behind. It made him dread their random notebook inspections. He was on edge all the time. The stress was killing him. And this was only coursework. The exams were still to come.

  One instructor—a guy named Thomas Brolin—bucked the trend. He did have money riding on Rooney’s fate, but he was backing him to pass. Not because he was an optimist. Not because he was hoping to send good vibes out through the universe. Not even because he’d been seduced by the lopsided odds. But because he’d been watching. He’d spotted a characteristic that he believed would enable Rooney to turn his performance around. A willingness to cheat.

  Rooney wasn’t up to anything outrageous. He wasn’t breaking into the office and stealing papers. He wasn’t bribing anyone to get better grades. The things he was doing were more subtle. Looking over a classmate’s shoulder when he was falling behind. Sneaking another cadet’s notebook back to his room to copy after a particularly fast session. Volunteering to clean the chalkboard, but only wiping half at the end of the class and creeping back later in the evening to transcribe the rest.

  Brolin watched, and he knew that outside the classroom there was a particular bar that Rooney liked. It wasn’t popular with the other cadets, which was the reason Rooney chose it. He didn’t like being surrounded by people who made him feel stupid. One evening, when things in the course were nearing a crisis point, a woman approached him. She said she had something special to offer him. Rooney felt a flutter of excitement. Then a hint of fear that the stress he was under might affect his performance. Then a major dose of embarrassment when he realized that wasn’t the kind of special she was talking about. He asked for details, and she explained that two options were available. Silver. And gold. Silver would see his notebook completed, neatly—but not too neatly—for the rest of the year. Gold would give him the same thing, plus sight of the questions and answers two weeks before the date of the exams.

  Rooney finished the program third. From the top. All the instructors lost their money, except the one who was running the book. And Brolin. He won his bet. And he pocketed the fee for the special. Gold doesn’t come cheap. So when he approached Rooney, right after the graduation ceremony, and offered him commission for visiting various bars from time to time, and explaining certain packages to any cadets who might benefit from a discreet leg up, the new officer was more than happy to accept.

  “Mom! Will my friends be here soon?”

  Mrs. Klinsman couldn’t look her son in the eye. It was the kind of moment that every parent dreads. What should you do? Lie? Yes, honey, I’m sure they’ll be here any minute. Like you want to, so you don’t break their heart. Like you have done three times already. Or do you tell them the truth? And if you go with the truth, how do you explain what’s changed? How you honestly believed everything you said before upr
ooting your family and transplanting them to New York.

  Last year, when Jimmy turned five, all the local kids came to his party. There were too many to fit in the house. They had to rent a marquee for the yard. They had a magician. A clown. As much pizza as anyone could eat, cooked fresh in a wood-fired oven imported from Italy. Not that the kids cared where it came from. Or that the freezer for the ice cream—all seventeen flavors—needed its own generator. Then there was the disco, with genuine quadraphonic sound and a mirror ball. A table for the presents, which almost collapsed under the weight of all the packages. And a separate tent, complete with beanbags and a margarita bar, for the adults.

  That was back when they lived in Pittsburgh.

  When Jimmy was in preschool, on Fridays he’d always ask his friends over to play after the session had finished. Half a dozen showed up every week, minimum. Often there were more. Always it was bedlam. There were toys everywhere. Kids shrieking and racing around. A movie blaring on the VCR. Mrs. Klinsman would seek sanctuary in the kitchen with the other moms, under cover of baking cookies. They’d talk. They’d laugh. Sometimes there was even a glass of wine.

  Back when no one cared about the size of your house.

  On the weekend, if Jimmy wanted to go to a museum or the pool, his mom would make a few calls. There were always plenty of volunteers. She’d swing by the kids’ houses, scoop them up, and usually stop somewhere for burgers and shakes on the way home.

  Back when no one cared about the badge on the car you drove.

  Mrs. Klinsman enjoyed the ritual of packing Jimmy’s lunch, and standing outside with him and the other moms as he caught up with his friends and waited for the bus.

  Back when people didn’t send their kids to kindergarten in a limousine.

  Mrs. Klinsman used to get some time with her husband when Jimmy went to the neighbors’ to play. She used to get some time she especially enjoyed, if Jimmy was feeling brave enough to sleep over somewhere.