by Chris Knopf
“So you could identify individual investors by the names on the checks drawn against the ECM.”
Brad thought about it a moment.
“I suppose you could. Of course. Not that I would. But somewhere here there’s a scan of every one of those checks. Lord knows how you’d find it. You don’t know the word labyrinthine’ until you’ve dealt with our internal administration.”
Jackie started to say something, but I put my hand on her leg to stop her. I needed a second of quiet. I closed my eyes and saw a miniature version of a bank check, a smudged-looking photostat, festooned with stamps and inked-in notations. I’d seen one once when someone had stolen my checkbook and used it to buy a set of tires. They’d copied the front and back, so you could see the endorsement was clearly a fake, not even an attempt at forgery.
“Do you have the addresses and phone numbers for all these clients?” I asked Jackie, holding up the sheet.
“Not here. In my computer with the stuff Alena gave me. But I’m sure she still has all that. I could give her a call. Nobody’s given much thought to the non-hostiles. Actually none. Why are we now?”
“I feel like I know those guys. Neville and Hugh.”
“You must have played darts with them at the pub.”
“Yeah. Sound like Brits.”
“The Oppressors.”
“Don’t start getting tribal.”
“I’ll confirm with Alena.”
Brad looked like he was about to put his fingers back in his ears, so I got him back in our conversation.
“So Gabe Szwit’s doing okay for Appolonia. Jonathan’s wife. Far as you know.”
“Yes, seems quite competent. We did some rebalancing last month. He had a plan, but was interested in what I had to say. Asked some very insightful questions. Felt like old times, though without Miss Zapatas charm. That I’ll miss.”
I looked for the first time to see if he had a wedding ring, which he did. Too bad. Would be another excellent test of the theorem that opposites attract.
It looked like Jackie had learned enough to start feeling paranoid again, so I took the hint and stood up, reaching out my hand to Brad. Jackie joined me.
“Thanks for all your time and information,” she said “Very good of you.”
The faintest suggestion of pleasure flickered across his face.
“Not at all. I like to be of help. We’re basically a service organization here, so I guess it’s in the DNA,” he said, warmly, and I believed him.
It was pleasant to have him walk us all the way down to the lobby and help Eugenia sign us out. He paid her a crisp little compliment, something like, “Don’t you look put together today, Eugenia,” which caused her to toss back a bountiful smile. I thought to myself, there isn’t enough genius in the world to fully divine the social subtexts of a modern American corporation. Lord knows I never could.
It was still summer when we got out to the street, only now the air was palpable, a fine concoction of heat, humidity and fetid reek of a style available exclusively on the midsummer streets of New York City.
“This clinches it,” I said. “I’m spending the rest of the summer in the Hamptons.”
“Pretty cruel, given where I’m going.”
“Not at all. NYU’s like a resort.”
“That’s why I picked it.”
“Oh, not because they have special deals for FBI agents? Or lawyers following their disbarment for impersonating FBI agents?”
She grimaced.
“I called Brad on my cell phone last week when I was alone in Web’s office. Told him to call me back on Web’s land line, so he heard ‘Welcome to the Nassau County office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. If you know your party’s extension, dial it now, yadda, yadda.’ So technically, I never said I was with the FBI. I was going to straighten him out today, but it didn’t actually quite come up, not directly, and it was going so well, I never got around to it.”
“Just hope Brad and Maryanne never end up sitting together on an airplane.”
It was a relatively short drive from the parking garage back up the East Side and over to First Avenue. Jackie didn’t seem in the mood to talk, and that was okay with me. I needed a chance to think, something a lot of chatter wouldn’t have helped. I offered to park and walk her in, but she wouldn’t let me.
“Don’t try babying me,” she said, opening the car door and dragging her bags out of the backseat. “You won’t be any good at it.”
“Say Jackie, what’re the chances you can get on a computer before they operate on you?”
She closed the door and leaned in the open window.
“I don’t know. Given what I’ve done today, I might as well just steal one.”
“Don’t move for a second,” I said, though I made her wait for almost five minutes while I wrote out some stuff on a piece of notepaper and handed it to her. “You said you could find out anything on the Internet. See if you can answer those questions.”
After reading it, she folded the paper and stuck it in her shirt pocket.
“Census data is all online. You can actually look at scans of the forms the census workers fill out. Yearbooks, I don’t know. Depends on the school, but I’m guessing they only started putting that stuff online in the last five years or so. Most colleges have alumni sites. I could try that. I was already going to check into Neville and Hugh. It would help if I knew what you were getting at,” she said, “though if past experience is any guide, you aren’t about to tell me.”
“Just see what you can find out.”
“Right, and then what. You’re the last person on the planet who doesn’t have a computer, cell phone or answering machine. If I don’t catch you at home, that’s it.”
“Give me the paper back.”
I wrote down a phone number and email address.
“This is my daughter. Call her and ask her if you can email everything you get—I’d like to see any original documents—and have her print it out and overnight it to my house.”
“Why don’t you ask her yourself?”
“She’ll do it as a favor to you. Better than me asking directly.”
“I can’t believe I’m going into the hospital for life-defining surgery and you give me a ridiculous assignment.”
“You said not to baby you.”
She shook her head, stuffed the paper back in her pocket and collected her bags off the sidewalk. I committed myself to at least watching her till she got through the entrance, so I saw her when she turned around and looked back. I was too far away to clearly see her expression, which had something sadly complicated going on, but I heard her say, “You do the best you can, Sam,” and then something else, but by now she was too far away and I missed it as she disappeared through the entrance to the hospital.
TWENTY-FIVE
THE MIDTOWN TUNNEL was only a few blocks away so I was out of Manhattan in a few minutes, heading east. There was one more stop I had in mind, one I hadn’t shared with Jackie. I’d written the address down on the top of a map of Long Island I kept stored in the console, now on the passenger seat to help me plot my course.
General Resource Recovery was located near Massapequa, a town just above the south shore of the Island. Their ad in Thomas Register promised fair prices for scrap metal of all kinds, and an assortment of high-quality, contaminant-free recycled material. There was a phone number, so I could have called ahead, but I knew Ivor Fleming was always delighted by a surprise visit.
It was getting late in the afternoon, so I hustled along as fast as the traffic on the Long Island Expressway and Wantagh Parkway would let me. I made it there by quarter to four, relieved to see an open parking lot instead of a tall chainlink fence and guard hut. A plain one-story office block fronted the lot. Behind and above you could see an elevated transport system for lifting and sorting a mountain of tangled, rusty red scrap. Somewhere out of sight a furnace was cooking up the goodies, separating elements and alloys, oxidizing and vaporizing trace materials
and issuing ingots, rods and pellets of gleaming semi-molten steel.
I located the big black pickup as I approached the entrance. It was close in, but not in a reserved spot, of which there were only two. The one with the bulky black Mercedes had a sign that said, “Don’t even think of parking here.”
Passing through the heavy wooden entrance doors, only partly assisted by pneumatic door openers, I saw in my mind’s eye a coffee-table book—Reception Areas of Greater New York. I could dedicate it to all the receptionists and security guards, underpaid and overlooked, who so ably administer one of the great pivot points of American commerce. Some, like Eugenia Wilde, at the helm of a stout slab of hardwood furniture. Others, like Ivor’s two paunchy schlubs, relegated to a folding card table set up in a corner just inside the front door. Each guard had a uniform, a sign-in book, a Smith & Wesson, a chair and a walkie-talkie. Probably mandated by the union. There was a single black phone in the middle of the table.
I was about to approach the guards when I noticed the foyer expanded out from the entrance into a large room, at the opposite end of which was another set of double doors, and on the walls to either side a pair of huge murals. The first thing I thought of was heroic industrialism, like in 1930s Soviet art, with heavily muscled men and women, in squared-off profile, toiling with backs straight, eyes forward. But that wasn’t quite it. The paintings had an abstract quality, an imprecision of form and composition that almost suggested a parody of their presumed subject. But not quite. The factories in the background were partly made of boxes and smoke stacks, but also office towers, redwoods and ancient campaniles. The colors were indescribable except to say they were dark and light, familiar and entirely out of context. But not a mishmash—there was a strong organizing sense underlying both the paintings that reminded me of Picasso. Or maybe Hieronymus Bosch.
I wished Allison was there to explain to me what I was looking at. Or better yet, the guy who painted them. Butch Ellington.
“Hey Buddy. Over here,” said one of the guards.
“Sorry,” I said, walking back to their table. “Caught me by surprise.”
“You get used to it. Who you here to see?”
“Ivor Fleming.”
They simultaneously looked down at their respective sign-in books.
“You got an appointment? What’s your name?”
“Sam Acquillo. I don’t have an appointment, but he’ll see me.”
“Yeah, right. No appointment, no see.”
They both seemed amused by the idea.
“Okay but what if you’re wrong. What if he would’ve seen me but you didn’t let him know I was here. How would that go over?”
“There’re worse things than getting fired. So if you don’t mind,” he said, waving me toward the door.
“How about Ike or Connie. They here?”
The mood at the guard desk took a quick turn to circumspection.
“Maybe. You got an appointment with them?”
“No. But you can probably tell them I’m here, and I guarantee they’ll be out to say hello. Then, if they think Mr. Fleming’ll see me, you’re in the clear. How bout it?”
One of the two was sold enough to pick up the phone and call somebody, telling them to go find Ike and Connie and have them call the reception desk. While we waited I walked over to get another look at the murals.
One of the interesting things was the way certain images within the paintings had their own logic, telling their own little story, yet when you stood back they would collectively resolve into another coherent representation. I wondered how many levels of articulated imagery could be contained within a single work of art, like a fractal, revealing themselves layer after layer as you dove down into the painting.
Thus lost in thought, I didn’t realize my two buddies were out there with me until I heard Ike clear his throat.
You couldn’t say they were looking their best. Connie’s nose was still swollen, maybe permanently, and Ike’s lip was probably a week or two shy of full recovery.
“Hey fellas, how’s it going?”
I stuck out my hand to shake, causing them both to back up a step.
“Come on. I thought we’d cleared all that up.”
“What’re you doing here?” asked Ike.
“I want to see Mr. Fleming.”
“And I want to see Heather Locklear in a bikini. Not happening anytime soon.”
“You can be overprotective, you know, Ike. I think that’s what you’ve been doing here.”
“That’s the job, asshole. Protection.”
The two guards overheard the asshole part and walked over with their hands resting on their holsters. Ike smiled at me.
“You could probably use a little yourself right now,” he added.
“Call up Ivor and tell him I’m out here. I’ve just got one thing to ask him. If he tells me to beat it, I’ll beat it. And you’ll never see me again.”
“Not breathing,” said Connie.
I pointed at him, but kept my eyes on Ike. “What’d I say about that stuff?”
Ike jerked his head at Connie and told him to back off, which he did. I walked over to the guard desk and sat down in one of their chairs.
“Go ahead, give him a call. I’ll be right here.”
Ike nodded at the guards, one of whom came over and made the call.
“Lois, this is Max at the front desk. I’m with Ike and Connie and we got a guy named Acquillo who’s here to see Mr. Fleming. Doesn’t have an appointment, but Ike thinks Mr. Fleming might want to see him anyway. Don’t bother him if he’s really busy with something.” He paused, listening. “Okay then I guess why not ask him. You can call me back.”
From where I sat I had a good view of the mural on the right-hand wall. I determined it was painted on a very smooth surface, but not directly on the wall, though that was the impression encouraged by the way it was hung. Clever. Well thought out, like everything Butch Ellington did.
The phone rang. Ike picked it up.
“He said to come on back. Let’s go, hero,” he said to me, ushering me into the lead, with him and Connie a close step behind. We went through the double doors and into a wide room filled with cubicles that looked a lot more like Ross’s squad room than Brad Maplewhite’s brokerage house. A few people looked up at us as we walked down the passageways, though not overtly. I suspected in Ivor’s shop the concept of keeping your head down had some tangibility.
Ivor’s office was in the corner of the open office area distinguished by walls paneled in the kind of luan ply that was popular in the fifties and sixties. Back then you could have bought dimensional mahogany for about two cents a board foot, but why do that when luan looks just as good?
A frump of a middle-aged woman, who had to be Lois, got up from her desk and planted herself just outside the office door.
“You’re Mr. Acquillo,” she said to me.
“I am.”
“Just wait here a moment. He wants to see you alone,” she said, with a firm look at Ike and Connie. It didn’t seem to bother them. When she came back out to show me in, I could see why. At the far side of the room was a long leather couch, covered partway with a well-worn sheepskin mat that Cleo had deftly shaped into a comfortable bed. Ivor was at the other end behind a big wooden desk of the same vintage and aesthetic as the paneling. The walls, shelves and side tables were filled with golf memorabilia, some clearly going back decades, like a black-and-white photo of young Jack Nicklaus posing with skinny young Ivor Fleming. The present Ivor slumped down in a heavily padded green leather chair, swiveling slowly back and forth like a kid checking out his dad’s office furniture.
I ignored Cleo, but sat down as swiftly as I could in one of the hot seats directly in front of the desk. Lois silently shut the door.
“You got balls, I’ll give you that,” said Ivor, by way of a greeting.
“More curiosity than courage, if you want to know the truth.”
“I’m curious about something myself,�
�� he said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be sitting here.”
“Okay.”
“My boys said they were jumped by a bunch of guys they never seen before. Pulled some kind of kung fu on em. What do you think?”
“Must’ve been something like that. Nobody else would take on a pair of hard cases like Ike and Connie.”
“Yeah. Sure. Nothing to do with you, then. I told them to keep an eye on you. They’re not exactly Serpico when it comes to undercover work. You coulda seen em and called in somebody.”
“Nope. Wouldn’t know how, even if I was stupid enough to show that kind of disrespect to you.”
He liked that. It didn’t show, but I’d known a lot of Ivors over the years. They always liked that kind of thing. He slid up a little taller in his chair and pulled himself over to the desk.
“So what’s with the investment deal,” he asked me. “You still trying to peddle that shit?”
I glanced over at Cleo. She looked like she was asleep on the couch. A good sign.
“Doesn’t look good,” I told him. “Your original assessment was basically accurate. Nothing much to sell, even though most of his clients got a pretty decent return on their investment. More than decent.”
That made him unhappy again. Only this time not at me.
“What a putz. I don’t know why I listen to these guys.”
“So he made all the calls. I mean, you followed his advice.”
“What the fuck else you pay him for?”
“Some people like to lead the charge with their brokers. Like to get in the game. Like you said, a trip to the casino without the chips and slots.”
“You want to know about steel? You come to me. There’s nothin’ I don’t know about how to make it, salvage it, extract it and sell it. Then get it back, chew it up and sell it all over again. This is what I know about. Investments? I don’t know shit about that stuff.”