Walls of Silence

by Walls Of Silence Free(Lit)

My mouth was dry. Tea would be good, but I didn’t want hospitality of any kind from this man.

  “You run a comprehensive laundering service for Non-Resident Indians.” It sounded like I was reading from a cue card. “It may have started with gold from the Gulf into India, but now you’ll deal in anything; shares, land, equipment, anything. Ketan Securities is the conduit, and massive sums of money pump through it. The tie with the NRIs is Huxtable BV, which in turn is owned by Saracen Securities, a Turkish company. You are consolidating the structure by bringing Ketan Securities into Jefferson Trust via acquisition. Saracen, a client of Clay & Westminster, is to be acquired by Reno Holdings, a client of Schuster Mannheim. When the consolidation is complete everythingwill revolve in one harmonious and unshakable orbit. Where the merger of Schuster and Clay fits in, I can only hazard a guess, but I expect it has a role.”

  I’d already exhausted the contents of the cue card. I was still trying to make sense of Ernie’s epitaph.

  McIntyre nodded. “Nice executive summary. Neat, concise. Rounded off with a little lyricism. ‘Orbit.’ Cute.” He turned to Mendip. “Pity we can’t keep him, Charles. In other circumstances, he’d be partner material.”

  He waved his hand at Askari. “Anything you’d like to add, Sunil?”

  Askari scowled.

  “Okay,” McIntyre continued. “And what documents do you have that show the connection between Huxtable and Ketan, between Saracen and Huxtable? Where is the link between Huxtable and these NRIs? What do you have, to show that Reno wants Saracen? Show us.Show usthe agreements, the contract notes. Show us the thread leading out of India, and leading into the States. And show how this has anything to do with Clay & Westminster or Schuster Mannheim. Or rather, Schuster & Westminster. Show us. I don’t see a document case with you, Fin. I know you’d keep originals elsewhere, but surely you’d have copies for us. If you’re going to blackmail us, Fin, you need the paperwork. We’re attorneys. We need paper.”

  I pulled the e-mails out. I began to doubt myself. Proof? Maybe proof was measured by the weight of paper, not the content. Law courts were always filled with dozens of ring-bound files. Mountains of papers, tabbed, cross-referenced, capable of withstanding forensic cross-examination. A good advocate could turn a birth certificate into a death certificate. But he’d need a ton of paper to perform the alchemy. Maybe, in my frenzied tour of Long Island, I’d forgotten the meaning of evidence: cogency, directness, provenance, corroboration. I’d put evidence at the top of my timetable, and then grabbed at circumstance and hearsay. I’d ignored its true meaning.

  And as to my darker suspicions about what lay behind Gemini, I had only one piece of paper. The fractured monologue of a demented man at the point of death.

  I handed the e-mails to McIntyre. He took out a pair of tiny reading glasses, nicer than mine, and peered at the sheets, riffling through them all in less than a minute. He put his reading glasses back in a leather pouch.

  “Numbers, Fin,” he said. “All I see is numbers.” He held the sheaf up in the air. “Sunil, Charles. You can look at them for yourself, but I suggest you don’t bother. Like I said, just numbers.”

  “It’s not all numbers,” I said. “Look at the headers, the names.”

  McIntyre clicked his tongue in irritation and took up his reading glasses again.

  “Kirpa Ram, Jowar Singh, Durga Dass.” McIntyre looked at Askari. “I’m sorry if my pronunciation is less than perfect, Sunil.” He turned over a few more pages. “Ram Narain, Ram Dass. More Indian names. I’ve never heard of them.”

  He carefully placed the e-mails on the little pedestal table, putting a milk pitcher over them to keep them in place.

  “Who are these people?” he asked.

  “You know who they are. They’re characters out of a short story by Rudyard Kipling. A story called ‘Gemini.’ ”

  McIntyre laughed. “So these guys are our money launderers. Guys out of a work of century-old fiction. You must’ve bumped your head quite badly on the way here, Fin.”

  “I know what these e-mails say, McIntyre. It’s not as difficult as you think. They’re about deliveries of money. More money than most people can dream of. Arrangements for share deals. Bribes to officials. Account details. There are names in there, big and small. And they aren’t fictional.”

  McIntyre still looked relaxed. “But not our names, Fin. Our names won’t be in there.”

  He was right. In theory. Clearly, the names of the black synod must never be set down in writing. But Carlstein had been careless.

  “Only once, McIntyre. But once is enough.”

  Once was evidence.

  McIntyre’s ice melted a little, enough to let me know that inside, lava bubbled. He pulled at the e-mails, knocking the milk pitcher to the floor, the white liquid disappearing almost immediately into several inches of carpet pile. “Whose name? Where?”

  “I’ll let you find it for yourself,” I said, as calmly as I could manage. “But it’s your name, McIntyre.”

  I could see that he wanted to claim that I was bluffing. But then maybe he realized that I would never risk coming into the lion’s den without something moderately ballistic in my back pocket.

  He settled back into his chair. Both Askari and Mendip came forward and started looking at the e-mails. The threesome looked as if they were ready for the Gemini Club photograph. McIntyre in his seat, Mendip and Askari flanking him. Only Carlstein was missing.

  “You told me that you wanted to meet face-to-face,” McIntyre said. “So what do you want? If you don’t go wild, I imagine we might try and accommodate you.” He paused. “But if you step over the line, then I won’t be able to stop Sunil from tearing out your fucking throat.”

  “The victims of JJ’s suicide may never get anything,” I said. “JJ created a cloud of confusion. He caught you off guard, I think. His brother had driven him too far, hurt him too much. Whatever. It was one hell of a problem for you, until you realized that he’d also served up my head on a plate. And in the confusion, you know that you’ll be able to help things drag on for years, and most likely end with a settlement hatched between the insurers, way below the mark. You’ll exhaust them.

  “So,” I continued. “I want fifty million dollars paid over immediately to Marshall, Forrester, Kellerman, and Hirsch on behalf of the Huxtable Trust Company. It’s a settlement. They may or may not take it. But you must pay it. I don’t care if the money comes from Huxtable, or some of your NRI friends, or out of your own pockets.”

  Askari looked like he was going to make a run at me, but McIntyre raised his hand to hold him back, confining himself to the observation that Marshall, Forrester were schmucks and ambulance chasers. They gave the profession a bad name, he said.

  “That may be so,” I said, “but my demand still stands. Next, I want you to pay Miranda Carlson five million dollars. I want you to honor Huxtable’s obligation to Delaware Loan of nine hundred and fifty thousand plus interest. I also want my fifty thousand plus interest returned to my Chase account. Finally I want you to pay one milliondollars to Paula. This has to come from your own bank account, McIntyre. It doesn’t go near to repairing the damage you’ve done her, but we’re attorneys and everything has a price tag, doesn’t it?”

  I paused. “That’s the money side of things. Now for the people. First me: exoneration, rehabilitation, nothing less than total, Manelli off my back, extradition proceedings dropped, litigation cleared up. You have the power to do this.”

  McIntyre laughed. “You think we know what JJ did? Part of a grand strategy of ours? You were right, he caught us off guard, the crazy fuck. Maybe youdidown the car, maybe it was part of your own screwy strategy. Beats the hell out of me, confused Carlstein too; shearing off his head reduced his stress levels on that score.” So, even the death of a club member didn’t bother him.

  “I don’t care if you fabricate the evidence, just do it, clear me.” I paused. “I understand that you will be announcing new partners on the merger.”
>
  McIntyre nodded almost imperceptibly.

  “Is Pablo Tochera still on that list?”

  McIntyre laughed. “Fuck no. I found out that he went to JFK and bailed you out. I only put him on your case because I thought he was a lousy lawyer. Well, he was better than he was supposed to be. He has no future with this firm. You’ve made sure of that.”

  “Put him back on the list.”

  McIntyre snorted.

  “Someone else too,” I said, ignoring the interjection. “Terry Wardman. I don’t know where he is, but tomorrow I want him to wake up as a partner.”

  “We can’t do that,” Mendip wheezed. “He’s not a qualified lawyer. Only lawyers can be partners, you know that.”

  I studied Mendip. There was so little of him left, he was like a blood donor that had gone all the way. Drained dry.

  “I’m aware of that,” I said. “But when the mistake is realized, the compensation you’ll have to pay should be enough to settle his score. Maybe he can finance a sabbatical to qualify andthenyou announce his partnership the second time around. I don’t care. Just do it.”

  I looked at my watch. It was just after six.

  “Are we keeping you from another appointment?” McIntyre sneered.

  They were keeping me from another life. A life I hoped to be a bit better at, next time around.

  McIntyre stood up, took out a handkerchief, and laid it over the shadow of milk on the carpet.

  “No use crying over it,” he said casually. “You’re a loser, Border,” he continued. “Like your father. Like JJ Carlson, like Ernie fucking Monks. No sense of the big picture. A force with one hundred and twenty billion dollars behind it. Think of it. An aimless, fragmented block of money, frustrated ambition, hidebound by red tape and interference. Whatever else he might have been, Carlstein was a visionary, we were just the lawyers, the servants, as lawyers should be. But no doubt you find that distasteful.”

  “I do,” I said. “But I like it a whole lot better than shipping children and women out of Bombay as prostitutes and sex slaves.”

  I pulled the Ganesh figurine from my pocket.

  “You have perverted this to your own use,” I said. “Just like you’ve perverted everything else.”

  Ganesh on the school uniform of a Pixie, Ganesh on a novice whore’s schoolbook in Baba Mama’s. A school endowed by the Gemini Club. And my father. And JJ.

  McIntyre didn’t blink.

  “You better have a lot more than numbers and a silly statue to show us on this one, Border.”

  I did. I had the epitaph of a man who could no longer look himself in the face. A man who could see waving masts on the way down the Via Dolorosa. The waving masts of the Seawanaka Yacht Club. The big house on the hill. A halfway house to hell.

  “There’s a school,” I said. “Endowed by the Gemini Club and others of your inner circle. There’s a whorehouse in Bombay, a staging post, a training ground. And then there’s a big house on Centre Island.” The baronial version of Ellis Island, death row for Pixies. “The place where you paraded Paula for Carlstein’s pleasure and took a jerk-off as tip.”

  Mendip grimaced.

  “Lies and speculation,” McIntyre said, coming over to me, picking up Ganesh. He studied it, stroked it, and then, without warning, slammed it down into my lap. All other pain stepped aside for the crushing agony delivered to my testicles.

  “I don’t think JJ was the victim of speculation when he killed himself,” I stammered when I’d recovered a little, the shooting pains beginning to give way to a dull ache. “I think he realized he’d become nothing more than a gargoyle pinned to the facade of your satanic cathedral. You and Carlstein had taken nearly everything from him, and were about to take the rest. Maybe he threatened you back, said he’d blow the lid off the whole thing. And you told him—go ahead, make your confession, see what happens when a penniless coked-up paranoid goes head-to-head with a brilliant lawyer and a few billion in vested interests. So he decided to make a wave so big that there was a good chance you’d drown too.”

  “Psycho-crap, Border. Carlson’s brain was Sloppy-Joe by the end, and no more capable of thought than that milk on my carpet.”

  I ignored him. “And Ernie Monks,” I said. “You must have dangled dirty carrots in front of him for years. You drove him mad.”

  “He ate a few of the carrots.”

  “I don’t think so.” There would be no point in varnishing the truth in a deathbed confession.But the darkest crime still lies in my head, my heart, as yet uncommitted.

  I then turned to Askari. “What’s aHijra?”

  His face curdled. “Disgusting creatures. Men who aren’t men. Men who cut off their seed. They are vermin.”

  The men behind the bead curtain at Baba Mama’s. Transvestites? Transsexuals? It sounded more profound than that.

  The twine around Ernie’s penis, the hairless body, the wig. Only through pain could he become a Hijra, he’d said. But in the end, his pain was too great, and he’d killed himself. He hadn’t been able to protect the Pixies, because he couldn’t stop wanting them for himself.

  “The Hijra dance at the birth of a child,” Askari went on. “At weddings, at anything auspicious. They demand money for their lascivious dances. But they are whores, worse than whores. You know that when they cut off their manhood, they insert a twig in the hole,to keep it open. So that they may urinate. They are an abomination.”

  Askari marched across the room and leaned over me. He smelled of lavender, violets. Sweet, sick. “They claim authority from the gods. Shiva. The mother gods. The gods disown such foul disciples. It brings shame on them and on India. They must be kept behind closed doors.”

  The bolted door again.Behind that door is not for us.

  “And how did Carlstein keep you behind the door of the Gemini Club? What predilection did he appeal to?”

  Askari growled.

  McIntyre moved behind him, coaxing him back to the armchair. “It’s okay, Sunil. It won’t be long now. Then you can go back home.”

  McIntyre turned to me. “And what about your father?” he said. “You think he didn’t like the carrots?”

  The blur of wood nymph flitting across the bedroom of a house in Hampton Court.

  At this, Mendip raised his head and struggled for breath. “That’s enough, Jim,” he managed.

  “What’s the matter?” McIntyre seemed angry at Mendip’s interjection. After all, McIntyre was chairman of the Gemini Club now that Carlstein had been ousted. McIntyre held the gavel, and points from the floor had to follow the Chairman’s agenda.

  “I’m sorry, Jim.” Mendip rested his hands on the desk. “Sinclair Border was a friend.” Mendip looked up at me. “He never touched the girl at the house, Fin.” He was struggling for air. “He wanted to tell you, explain. The truth is, he was trying to save her.”

  McIntyre was furious. “That was fucking gratuitous, Charles.”

  “Perhaps,” Mendip conceded. He slumped into the desk chair, exhausted. “But it’s the truth.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Charles . . .”It was the first time I’d seen McIntyre begin to lose it.

  He took a small sip of tea, in an attempt to finalize the exchange. “Just take a few pulls on that little machine of yours and shut the fuck up,” he said viciously. “Anyway. Carlstein’s dead. In some ways I guess we have Billy the Kid here to thank for freeing us.”

  He then turned to me.

  “Back to business,” he said. “That’s quite a list of demands you’ve given us. Now why do you think we would be prepared to pay more than ten dollars into the lawyers’ benevolent fund and leave it at that?”

  “There’s a computer on your desk,” I said. “Log onto the Internet. If you know how.”

  “You’re an asshole,” he muttered, but got up and went around to the back of his desk, shooing Mendip out of his chair.

  “Search for Kipgem,” I said.

  I went around to the screen. McIntyre was online. The system w
as searching. The hourglass cursor, a spinning globe. Antennae reaching out into the eternity of the Web. But nothing to show for it except a message saying that the page could not be found.

  “Try Cacacoo.”

  McIntyre winced. “You’re kidding, right?”

  Thanks, Pablo.

  “Just do it,” I hissed, sure that McIntyre could smell my rising panic.

  “You’re the guy with the gun.”

  I wished I was, but my holster was empty. I was empty, like the screen.

  Cacacoo was a no-show.

  I saw McIntyre relax. “So what now, Fin Border?”

  Had Pablo failed to get the sites up and running? He’d sounded so confident. If he had gotten them up, then where were they? Why didn’t they show on a search?

  That was it. The search engines might not pick them up. They needed to be registered, didn’t they? With Yahoo or something.

  A Web search for the single word was no good; you had to type in the exact Web address to get there.

  “Type in a full site address: www and all that shit.”

  “You do it,” McIntyre said.

  I did. Kipgem came up within five seconds. It told the reader to get their hands onIn Black and Whiteand flip to “Gemini.”

  McIntyre sat back slowly and stroked his beard. If the tape had stopped right there, I would have been happy. He looked as if someone had just thrown up on his three-thousand-dollar suit.

  Mendip and Askari huddled behind McIntyre and peered at the screen.

  “Cacacoo next,” I said. “Doesn’t sound so funny now, does it?”

  This took a little longer, the globe did a few extra orbits, but there they were. Reams of numbers. It was beautiful.

  I went back to the drum table and poured myself some tea.

  “Two Websites,” I said. “Unconnected. No hyperlink between them. The deal is this: If I don’t send a message saying I’m safe before seven tonight, then an e-mail will be sent to a few thousand interested parties, giving them both Website addresses and telling them to take a peek. The e-mail will contain an irresistible incentive to do this.”

  I paused, waiting for some reaction. There was none. I had their attention.