Walls of Silence

by Walls Of Silence Free(Lit)

  “Did JJ or someone from management meet with them?” asked Carol.

  “Of course someone has,” Krantz snapped. “You don’t think we’d pay fifty million for a business without meeting the principals first.”

  I winced. It was a pretty stupid question. Her mind must have taken another little excursion. I tried to cast her a look of support and sympathy. But she just acted flustered and twirled her pen between her thumb and index finger.

  “If you look at page fifty of the pack,” Krantz said crisply, “you will see that the owners have a very good reputation and checks have been made to corroborate this.” He ran his finger down the margin. “There are three main family shareholders: father and two sons. Pop just counts the money in some serious real estate in the best part of town, while the sons run the business, one looking after the sales, trading, and research and the other doing the corporate finance work. It’s the sales and research we’re after; the corporate finance is good for a few contacts and being able to offer a turnkey service, but otherwise it’s too niche and marginal. They’ve got two office properties, one in a place called Narriman Point and the other somewhere I can’t recall—it’s mentioned somewhere in here. There’s a whole heap of useful shit in this pack. You two better make sure you read it well and quick. I expect you to be in Bombay in a few days.”

  “Time out, Chuck,” said Carol. “There’s a lot to do and it needs to be done properly.”

  “Listen Carol,” Krantz said hotly, “management want this dealdone real quick and I’m telling you that delay is out of the question. The Indian market is part of our core growth strategy, but it isn’t the core of the core, if you get my meaning. We don’t want to waste too much time on this thing. If we were going to buy something there we should have done it five years ago, not now. But I guess that’s by the by. The message is: no holdups, no screwups.”

  A crazy timetable. But there was nothing unusual in clients setting crazy timetables: It was their prerogative.

  “Will you be coming out to Bombay?” I asked.

  Chuck looked shocked.

  “Hell no. It’s a shit-hole, and anyway I have some very large transactions to work on. Nope, I’m sure you and Carol can handle it, no sweat. I’ll be contactable in the office or by e-mail or cellular the whole time. Like they say, I’ll call you if you need me.” He gave a good laugh at his macho banker witticism and waited for us to follow suit. Carol was stony-faced and I just made like I was studying my Project Badla folder. To some Bombay was a shit-hole. To me it was hell. I tried to concentrate on the fact that to eleven million people it was home.

  “So what’s next?” asked Chuck. He seemed to be directing the question at Carol, but she was miles away.

  “I’ll take a look at the folder,” I said, shouldering the question. “Then I’ll send over a draft timetable and list of documents together with a first cut of the due diligence questionnaire and some of the key documents.”

  “Sounds good.” Krantz flicked an irritated glance at Carol. He stood up, shook my hand, and thanked me. “If you’ll excuse us, I just want a word with Carol about something else.”

  I had no choice. Time alone with Carol would have to wait until later. She waved her hand.

  As I reached the door, she called out to me. “Did you bring your passport, Fin?”

  My subconscious had been praying that it had been forgotten. No visa, no visit.

  I handed it over.

  “You ever been to Bombay before, Fin?” Chuck asked.

  “Just the once,” I said and quickly made my exit.

  SEVENTEEN

  Ahot mist pressed itself against the outside of my twenty-fifth floor window. I could dimly make out the shape of the Brooklyn shore rising out of the East River, a soft charcoal gash in the gray.

  I’d just come off the line with Tochera, who had told me that he’d drafted a response to Marshall Forrester’s request for input from me. I asked to see it. He said, no need, I can summarize. Fuck you, Mr. Richter.

  He’d spoken to Clerkenwell Associates in London. Theyhadwritten a highly customized policy for a very fancy premium, paid up front. Me as owner and the insured. One other named driver: JJ Carlson. Beats me, Tochera had moaned, with the whole thing based on misrepresentation, it’s invalid, so why bother?

  JJ’s daisy chain of chaos. Someone would try and claim on it, they would contest it: either on the basis that it was real, that I had signed the form, or else by reference to some desperate, screwy jurisprudence. Whatever the basis, it was another energy source for JJ’s vortex.

  I diverted my phone calls and placed the Project Badla folder in front of me. I took a copy of the International Securities AssociationHandbook from my carefully assembled one-shelf library and opened the fat paperback at the India section and laid it next to the folder. I then opened a new file on my PC.

  I made my way through the Badla folder and sketched out a timetable and strategy as I went. There were moments when I forgot the fact that the subject matter was anchored in Bombay—during those moments I enjoyed myself. I could see the legal structure of the deal as clearly as if it were an architect’s plan laid out in front of me. I sensed the shape, texture, and length of the relevant documentation: I would write these from scratch, I rarely used precedent. By the normal standards of legal agreements, the paperwork would be concise and intelligible—even to the layman. It was what I did: clearing a path through the chaos of others, while leaving my own chaos untouched.

  But then the reality of Bombay would nudge the fluent stroke of my brushes and I would linger vacantly over a tiny corner of my canvas, unable to proceed without massive effort.

  There were other distractions from my work. Paul Lamberhurst and Alf Silverman both paid me visits to fill in some background or get clarification on the files that life’s slot machine had rained on them. Lamberhurst could barely hide his delight. In his aristocratic drawl, he managed to promise to steward the files well on my behalf before almost skipping from the room. Alf Silverman was more diplomatic. He was a US attorney specializing in antitrust law, or hatchback counting, as Ernie had called it. He seemed to appreciate that it was my misfortune that had served him up a good helping of free lunch and was fairly up-front about it. But I could still detect his thrill at being able almost overnight to clock up a calendar of quality billable hours without any effort on his part.

  Terry Wardman, the third dysfunctional musketeer, didn’t pay me a visit at all. I wasn’t surprised: I doubted whether we had exchanged more than sixteen words in the past five years. If it weren’t for the fact that I knew that Ernie thought so highly of him, he probably wouldn’t have registered on my radar screen. After all, he wasn’t even a qualified lawyer—he was a Legal Executive. But he was an expert on matters regulatory. An encyclopedia. Maybe I’d ask him for some background material on India, pick his brain.

  At around 5:30P.M.I closed the Badla folder and pressed the print button to spew out the work I’d done so far. It would appear at the printer on Paula’s desk; she’d see it and she’d bring it in. We’d hardly spoken to each other all day.

  I called Carol and got through straight away.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Krantz gave me a hard time over my performance at the meeting,” she said.

  “I thought he might.”

  She laughed nervously. “I can deal with him—he’s only a baby banker.”

  A pause.

  “How about you?” she asked. “You were dead to the world when I left this morning. I was worried you wouldn’t show. I wouldn’t have blamed you.”

  “Let’s eat out tonight,” I said. “If you’re free, that is. You choose.”

  “Cellar Americana. You know it?”

  It was a hip place on a corner in the middle of SoHo. There were tables on the sidewalk and, at that time, the air would be pleasant and the atmosphere a contradiction of buzz and relaxation. We could watch the people go by and drink good white wine and engage in conver
sational foreplay away from the dark clouds over my future.

  “In one hour,” I said.

  “Perfect.”

  Paula came in with my Badla product.

  “Busy guy,” she said dumping about fifty pages of material in front of me.

  I felt the crisp warmth of the freshly printed paper and turned over a couple of sheets to see how it looked. It was shaping up.

  I checked through it for another half hour and was about to make my way to Cellar Americana when Paula came back into the room.

  “I give it about five seconds before Mr. Monks comes to see you,” she said. “I think he’s been drinking.”

  The door swung open.

  “Eyelash.”

  It was Ernie, and Paula was right. His face was smeared and blotchy, although he seemed fairly steady on his legs. He wore a beautifully tailored summer suit of a gray whose lightness verged on cream. He asked politely for Paula to leave the room before he slumped into a chair.

  “Bloody hot,” he said, pulling a freshly laundered white linen handkerchief from his jacket pocket. He dabbed it gently across his forehead.

  He did his grieving moon impression. “I need a chaperon,” he said. “Can’t face it on my own.”

  “I’m afraid I already have an appointment.” Ernie could be very persistent in his quests for company.

  “Cancel it,” he said flatly.

  “It’s a client, Ernie. I can’t.” Carol was a client.

  “You don’t have any. Charles snaffled ’em.”

  He didn’t get this one, Ernie. She hid during the roundup.

  “Tomorrow, Ernie,” I said firmly. “We can go out tomorrow. I really can’t duck out of my appointment tonight.”

  Ernie moved from grieving moon to hurt child. “Just fifteen minutes. Not even that. Nine hundred, widdly wee seconds. Escort me, support me. When we get to where we get to, I shall release you into the night, free as a bat to flit amongst the gas lamps.”

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  Ernie brightened. “Good, that’s settled,” he said, slapping his massive hands together like a playful seal.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “As good as,” Ernie retorted. “Just to the Regent. Not a millimeter beyond.”

  “You’re not staying there, are you?” I didn’t want to go to the Regent. Too much risk of running into Keenes or Mendip or, worse still, Sunil Askari—although he was most likely already on a plane back to Bombay.

  “Good God, no.” Ernie seemed shocked by the suggestion. “Not enough chintz for me. Too cold. More for the likes of Charles.”

  “I won’t go in the hotel, Ernie. I mean it. To the door and that’s it.”

  Ernie frowned. “You negotiate like your father. A luscious villain. Very well: the door and no more.”

  Dad had been a great negotiator. He could have sold slaves to Abraham Lincoln.

  “After that, I have to go,” I said emphatically.

  “Go, go,” he said, now a tragic diva. “Desert me, I will not hold you back.”

  “I’ll see you downstairs in five minutes,” I said. “I must make a quick phone call.”

  I called Carol on her direct line. Voicemail. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I said out loud.

  “Language, counselor.” I looked up. Paula was standing in front of me.

  “Sorry,” I said sheepishly. “Could you do me a big favor and try and get hold of Carol Amen and tell her that I might be a bit late for my meeting with her.”

  “Meeting or date?” Paula teased. This woman was incredible.

  “There’s no getting anything by you, is there?”

  Paula laughed. “No. I’ll get hold of her for you. And you better get after Mr. Monks before he winds up walking into the street and getting himself knocked down.”

  “You’re an angel,” I said, blowing Paula a kiss. “And tell her I won’t be long.”

  I stopped at the door. “It’s our little secret, Paula. Okay?”

  She tapped her nose. “What is?”

  EIGHTEEN

  Ernie was sitting in the back of a Lincoln Towncar with its engine running. I climbed in beside him and turned to see him take a big slug out of a hip flask before poking it under my nose. The pungent vapor of scotch nauseated me.

  “No thanks, Ernie.”

  When Ernie hit the scotch, he meant business. Blues Booze, he called it. For him, gin was merely the warm-up act.

  “They’re having a bit of a do,” said Ernie.

  “Who’s having a do?”

  “Clay & Westminster Merger Committee—of which I am the most decorous member—and the senior shits from the Shyster Guggenheims. Charles has called us together for an evening of hands across the water. Or rather, Budweiser in their case and malt in mine.”

  “Christ, Ernie. You might have told me. If I’m seen even on the edge of a gate-crash, I’ll be in worse trouble than I am already.”

  Ernie shook his head sadly. “Trouble with insurers and Bombay buggeration, I hear. Don’t ask me for advice, I’m not sloshed enoughto play the lawyer. Anyway, I don’t know the details, they don’t tell me anything these days. There was a time when I could have helped you. But not now.” He took another swig from the hip flask. “You just stay lurking in the shadows of the backseat when we arrive. They’ll all be upstairs anyway. Now hold my hand, I’m maudlin and need the touch of innocent flesh.”

  It was crazy—sitting in the back of a limo holding the hand of a fifty-five-year-old man in a cream suit. But I had provided this gentle service several times before and never come to any harm, so what the hell.

  “They’re scared,” he said, his eyes shut, his tongue glossing his lips in languid sweeps.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “But McIntyre shoots cowards.” Ernie raised his hand and cocked his thumb. “Pop pop.Next. . .” The driver turned around in startled surprise at Ernie’s outburst.

  Ernie giggled. “He’s a fucking haddock with a beard. Your daddy didn’t like beards, did you know that, Eyelash?”

  “No.”

  “Ah well. The possum’s no longer with us. Can’t protect us from the raging bearded haddock.”

  He subsided in his seat. I thought he’d gone to sleep.

  “I’m scared too,” he said suddenly and sat up.

  “What of, Ernie?”

  “Not ‘of.’ ‘For.’ For you, Eyelash.”

  “That’s kind of you, but you’ve said there’s nothing you can do.”

  Ernie frowned. “I did say that, didn’t I? Rotten of me, pusillanimous.” He yawned like an elephant seal and swept his handkerchief over a fresh tide of sweat on his forehead. He then turned to me and cupped my face in his hands. His palms were big enough for my head to seem like a crystal ball comfortably resting in their generous embrace.

  “Your father was a wonderful man and a wonderful lawyer,” he said, “and you have inherited his elegance of intellect. Sometimes we forget the aesthetics of law, its inherent beauty.” His eyes ranged over my face. He really was scared, he wasshowingme his fear.

  “I became deputy senior partner of a small firm,” Ernie continued. “A few mavericks, a studio of artists, if you like, commissioned by people we admired and were interested in. Charles knew the future lay in a different direction—multinationals, banks, widget manufacturers. Unbeautiful but profitable. I don’t blame him, though. He’s a decent sort—been good to me. And to your father. And you. He’s trying to protect you, you know.”

  From whom, from what?

  Ernie tilted my head in his hands. “The picture’s got bigger, Eyelash. It’s more difficult to stand back from, see its whole. You know, like those pictures made up of dots. It takes a special perspective to see the picture for what it is. Take my advice, don’t just stand back, take two steps sideways. Standing back is for Johnny Average, the plodder. You’re better than that. But don’t ignore the dots, Eyelash. Once they think they’ve got the picture, people always ignore the dots. But you won’t
, will you? Dots can provide bearings. They can be coordinates.”

  We had pulled up outside the Regent.

  Ernie gently released my face. “Thank you for coming with me, Fin,” he said. “It was a kindness and I know it was a burden for you. I would have asked Terry Wardman to do the honors, but he wasn’t around.” He grinned. “Anyway, you are much, much prettier.”

  “Driver,” he suddenly shouted, “take my friend to his appointment with destiny.” With that, he heaved himself awkwardly out of the car, slammed the door shut, turned inelegantly on his heel, and tottered into the Regent.

  I told the driver where I wanted to go and sat back. Maybe I could inhabit a better world for a few hours. Tomorrow, the real world would come flooding back, invasive, unwelcoming, fueled by aggression and vitriol, overpopulated by cops, attorneys, and tabloids.

  Tilting the center armrest down I let my arm dangle lazily over it. I felt something on the seat.

  It was a black wallet, thin and floppy, made of the finest kidskin, monogrammed with the initials EM. I flipped it open and took out a VISA card. Mr. Ernest Monks. I leaned back in my seat, shut my eyes, and quietly mouthed every expletive I knew.

  I was due to meet with Carol in fifteen minutes. We were attorneys, Carol would understand. And “Fin the Quartz” was in a Queens cemetery, buried alongside JJ.

  As we pulled up outside the hotel again, I told the driver to keep the engine running. He nodded and smiled and informed me that, had he known the urgency, he would have offered to return the wallet after dropping me off in SoHo. Why the fuck hadn’t I thought of that?

  I got out and started to make the dash for the hotel entrance. Then I saw them. Standing next to a limousine a mere few yards away were Mendip, Keenes, an unsteady Ernie Monks, and another man I knew from pictures in the press to be Jim McIntyre. Could I still drop the wallet off at reception and get back to the car unseen?