His back felt pretty good, so he didn’t mind sitting in a chair and making some calls. He moved to a quieter table in the rear and had the, waiter bring him a regular phone. I’m going to have to play a little dirty, he thought. Thank goodness the board of directors goes along with everything I tell them. Retired second-tier executives, handpicked for their sleepy compliance. If Manila Telecom wanted to try to buy Teknetrix, then he was going to make it as expensive as possible. He dialed the company’s headquarters and told Karen to hold a line open for him. Then, in sequence, he ordered the investors’ relations office to announce that Teknetrix was repurchasing some of its stock—always a good sign for investors—and that the company would soon begin production of the Q4 multiport switch in the new factory in Shanghai. “Big press release,” he said. “Tomorrow.” Never mind that the company hadn’t yet engineered the Q4’s manufacturing sequence or finalized factory management or secured agreements for raw materials. The news would ping into business wire services, Internet investor sites, and Mr. Ming’s brain. Next he told the R&D people that the Q4 needed to be ready sooner. They’d have to ramp up the manufacturing design to catch up with the product design. They could squeeze out the final manufacturing efficiencies over the next six months, after they’d started gaining market share and cash flow. In fact, he was willing to absorb a narrow profit margin to protect the perception of the company. Manila Telecom would look behind the curve. What next? “Give me sales, Karen.” He told the sales division to book some third-quarter orders into the second-quarter profits they were about to announce—the auditors could correct the numbers later, more or less within statutory requirements.
“Any calls?” he asked Karen when she came back on the phone.
“None that are important,” she said.
His head was full of Teknetrix details, but there were other things he needed to remember. “I might get a call from someone named Melissa Williams.”
“No one by that name has called,” said Karen.
“Fine.” As they’d agreed.
“You sound really good, Charlie.”
“I I am.”
Next he called Jane in London.
“Charlie!”
“Just caught you.”
“Yes. I haven’t spoken to you in weeks.”
“Did you get that car?” he asked.
“No, I can’t do that.”
“If you say so.”
“You have another play?”
“No,” he answered. “I want you to transfer those GT proceeds to my private banker in New York.”
“That’s Ted Fullman at Citibank?”
“You got it.”
“All or some?” Jane asked.
“All.”
“It’ll be there in an hour. You seem kind of up, Charlie.”
On top here, he told himself, in the game. Eight million after-tax from a dead man’s mouth, sex with a twenty-seven-year-old woman, and I’m drinking tea made out of sea horses.
Next he called Fullman, who was excited to hear that sixteen million dollars were arriving in Charlie’s account. “What am I doing with this huge nugget, Charlie?”
“Two things, Ted. First, wire half to my accountant. The capital gains on this are all short-term. Now, with the remaining half I want to buy my wife a house.”
“You want me to handle that?”
Always helpful, the private banker. “Yes, as a matter of fact. It’s a retirement community in Princeton called Vista del Mar. Even though the ocean is nowhere near. Ellie has a deposit down on a property. Please call them up and get the balance and just close on it. It’ll be a million or two. You have that power of attorney still.”
“If it’s a cash deal, this can go quickly.”
“I’d like to surprise her.”
“That’s a hell of a gift, Charlie.”
“Yeah.”
“You must love her to pieces.”
“DADDY?” came Julia’s voice early the next morning. He had a headache upon waking and immediately wanted some of the odorous tea. “There’s something wrong with Mom. Somehow she got past the elevator man and tried to hail a cab in her bathrobe.”
“What?”
“She was standing out there with a little suitcase.”
“Where was she going?”
“I don’t know. The doorman brought her back inside and called me and I ran up there and we went straight to Dr. Berger’s. He looked at her right away and gave her some anxiety medication and said she shouldn’t be left alone tonight. I brought her to our place.”
“Can I talk to her?”
“She’s sleeping in the guest room. I don’t think I should wake her, Dad.”
“What does he think is wrong with her?”
“He can’t tell yet. She’s anxious. I know she’s been thinking about Ben a lot …” Julia sighed at the sadness of it. “She’s been taking too many sleeping pills, but she also has indications … They got her to sleep—basically knocked her out—and will do some blood work. Dr. Berger has some blood results from a year ago, and tomorrow they’re going to test the protein deposits in her blood and see if there’s a change. They can make some guess about how fast it’s going.”
“How fast what is going?”
“Alzheimer’s.”
“I really don’t—”
“Don’t fool yourself, Dad. Mom isn’t the same as she was a couple of months ago.”
“She was clever enough to buy a retirement home in New Jersey without me knowing about it,” he responded. “Seems like someone who is thinking all right.”
“You’ve just proved my point.” Julia, ever the lawyer, slicing his logic into piles and rearranging it into her own truth. “Yes, a month or so ago she was able to do that, though of course they’re very good at walking older people through this process, and now, now, she is hailing cabs in nothing but a bathrobe!”
“Okay,” he said.
“She had lipstick on, too.”
“What does that matter?”
“It explains a lot—oh, you wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me, dammit.”
“It’s just so heartbreaking.”
“The lipstick?”
“Yes! It shows she thought she was fine, she thought she was ready to go out, that she wanted to go out.”
“Where was she going?”
“By the time we got to Dr. Berger’s, she was sort of tired and hostile, so she didn’t say much, but I think she was trying to go to you.”
“Me?” He staggered out of bed and found the packet of tea.
“She said she was going to China.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t understand it. She said some papers came messengered to you at home and she opened them and thought you needed them.”
“What papers?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t been up to your apartment yet.”
The report from Towers, the investigator? What else could it be? I meant send it to me here, Charlie thought, didn’t I say that? What else could upset Ellie so much? She would have picked the pages off the front table by the elevator, Lionel going up and down in his circular window, and opened it, thinking perhaps it was urgent, since it had been messengered, and, reading it, gotten the shock of a lifetime.
“Are you going back to the apartment?” he asked Julia anxiously, dumping some of the dry tea into a glass of cold water. Maybe it had opium or cocaine or something in it, but he had to have it now.
“In about an hour, yes, to get her sleeping gown and stuff. The doctor expects her to sleep for about ten or twelve hours. She’ll feel more comfortable if she has her usual things.”
“Right,” he groaned. He looked at the concoction. It had dry bits floating on top. Why did he crave it so much? He jolted the whole glass of thick brown liquid down his throat.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You sounded funny.”
“I was drinking something, swee
tie.” Julia would prowl through the apartment looking for clues to her mother’s mental condition. If Ellie had left the investigator’s report out, Julia would find it.
“Daddy?”
“Yes.”
“Can you come home right away?”
He’d have to figure out how to accelerate negotiations with Mr. Lo. “I think I can take a plane tomorrow, sweetie.”
“How’s your back?”
“Amazing.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I got some Chinese medicine. They made it right in front of me. Really quite—”
“Dad?” Julia said suddenly. “I have someone on the other line. I’ll expect you home in about forty-eight hours?”
“Yes.” He thought of the investigator’s papers lying on the kitchen counter or wherever Ellie opened them. “Mom’ll be at your place tonight?”
“I think so.”
“Maybe she should stay a night or two.”
“I can’t. Brian is in L.A. until next week, and I’m leaving for London tomorrow.”
“So,” Charlie asked, his mind flying in front of the conversation, “Mom’ll get back into our apartment sometime tomorrow morning or afternoon?”
“Morning. I mean, she’s got pills that should calm her.”
Not if she reads the investigator’s report again, he told himself. “Tell her not to worry about anything and that I’m coming home.”
He retrieved Towers’s number and then stood in front of the bathroom mirror. He took off his shirt, looked at his stomach. A horror. Like his father’s twenty years ago. Melissa Williams must have been out of her mind. He sat down on the toilet thinking that he was starting to smell Chinese to himself. Happened on every trip.
He called Towers. “You sent me a package?”
“You got it? Good.”
“I’m in China,” Charlie told him bitterly.
“I don’t understand,” said Towers. “You called me at six o’clock this morning, said send it to me, but not at the office.”
“Yeah,” said Charlie. “I did.”
“I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Ravich.”
“Me too. What was in it?”
“Just the usual basic information.”
“Yeah?”
“Also, I’m getting some good stuff on that Melissa Williams.”
For a moment Charlie considered telling Towers to forget about Melissa Williams. Maybe that would be better. But he was curious about her. “Do me a favor,” he finally said.
“Sure.”
“Don’t write any of it down, goddammit. Nothing, not a report or a fax or anything.”
“I’ll have my handwritten notes.”
“Just read them to me and throw them away.”
“When?”
He looked at his watch. His headache was going away. He had the meeting with Lo. “Call me at the end of the day. My day. Five p.m.”
“That’s 5:00 a.m. here.”
“Yes,” said Charlie in a cold voice.
“Right,” answered Towers. “I’ll call. I’m terribly sorry about the mix-up.”
The tea was working now, helping him think. He wanted to know what Towers’s report said, but even more than that, he wanted to get it out of the apartment before Julia arrived. Ellie sounded as if she’d been pretty addled by the time she got to the doctor’s, but Julia wouldn’t forget a comma. He called the front desk of their building. “This is Charlie Ravich.”
“Evening, Mr. Ravich,” came the voice of Kelly, the doorman.
Not where I am, he thought. “Listen, is Lionel on duty yet?”
“Just got on.”
“Can you switch me to the phone in the elevator? I need to ask him a small favor.”
“Very good, Mr. Ravich.”
The phone clicked. “Lionel here.”
“Lionel, this is Charlie Ravich.”
“Mr. Ravich, sir.”
“I need a favor, Lionel.”
“Sure thing.”
“Take the elevator to my floor, please.”
“Right away.”
Charlie could hear the far hum of the elevator. The elevator stopped and the static with it. “Sir?”
“Lionel, you see the umbrella stand in the corner?”
“Yes.”
“There’s a key under it.”
“You want me to leave my elevator?”
“Yes. Just for a moment.”
“I never leave my elevator, sir.”
“I realize that. It’s a big favor.”
“Highly unusual.”
“Life is unusual, Lionel. That’s why we never know what’s going to happen next.”
“Yes, sir. But I try to avoid unusual things.”
“You need to do this now.”
“Mrs. Rosen usually comes down this time.”
“Just park the elevator and get the key.”
The line was silent. “Okay.”
“Here’s what I want you to do. Open the front door and look in the dining room and the kitchen for an envelope or a business letter marked with the name of a law firm.”
“What do you want me to do with it?”
“Find it first.”
Charlie heard the creak of the elevator cage. Then, perhaps, the sound of a door being opened. Then nothing. He was listening to silence being bounced through a satellite. Lionel was probably tiptoeing through the apartment, ogling all of the antique furniture Ellie had bought over the years.
“I’m back.”
“Yes?”
“I didn’t find anything.”
“Please look again. Go into any room. It’s probably a few pages and an envelope. Probably opened, too. It was messengered.”
“I’ll go back.”
He heard Lionel walk away.
“I have it,” he said. “A letter from a Mr. Towers. Right inside the door.”
“Opened?”
“Yes.”
“Please read it to me.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I want you to read it to me and then—”
“Excuse me. Yes?” Lionel was speaking into the elevator’s intercom. “She’s waiting? I’ll get her. I have to go now, Mr. Ravich.”
“No, hang on, Lionel, I don’t want to break the connection. Leave the phone off the hook.”
“It’ll be a few minutes.”
“I don’t care. I’m calling from China. I don’t want to risk losing the connection.”
“Yes, sir.”
Charlie heard the elevator hum upward to the twelfth floor.
“Evening, Mrs. Rosen,” came Lionel’s echoey voice.
“Lionel, I was waiting almost ten minutes.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Rosen.”
“They said you would be right up.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Rosen. I—”
“Whatever the reason, surely you could have had them call me and tell me you would be late … That’s my only bag.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You know my late husband moved us into this building in 1947. That’s more than half a century my family’s been in this apartment building. We could have gone other places, we had the money. Some of the other buildings even asked us if we wanted to buy in. We could have done that. We talked about it. Three blocks up they wanted us very badly. But we said no. We said we would put up with the bad elevators and the other problems. The quality of the people changed and we stayed very open-minded.”
“Yes, Mrs. Rosen.”
“The other buildings very much wanted Mort to buy in,” she went on. “He was respected by all of them. They knew his money going into a new place would make people feel comfortable. They knew that if Mort Rosen bought in, then it was solid, it was the gold standard.”
“Yes, Mrs. Rosen.”
“He was very respected.”
“Yes, Mrs. Rosen. Here’s the lobby.”
The elevator door creaked again.
“Yes, Mr. Ravich. I left the letter upstairs
.”
“Okay, let’s go to it, Lionel.”
At the eighth floor, Lionel disappeared from the phone again. “I have it,” he said when he came back. “Two pages.”
“I want you to read it to me.”
“Read it to you?”
“Yes.”
“It’s not short.”
“I’m waiting.”
“‘Dear Mr. Ravich,’” Lionel began. “Can you hear me okay?”
“Yes.”
“‘Purse—purse—’”
“Purse?”
“‘Pursuant to your wreck, your wreck-est—’”
“My request?”
“Yes. ‘—we have com-piled an … an anal—’”
“Anal?”
“‘Anal-sis—’”
“Analysis,” said Charlie.
“‘—of the three women you speck, speck—’”
“Speck?”
“‘Speck-fied. Each has strengths and weaknesses. Two, we believe, are supper—superior candies to bear you a child, based on persons—personals, family, education-al, and financial histories. Both of these candies–candy-dates report that they are eager to—’”
“Okay,” Charlie interrupted. “Stop.”
“Stop?” Lionel asked.
“Yes.” He’d heard enough. “Please destroy it. Please throw that letter down the garbage chute.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Do it now.”
“Absolutely.”
A pause, a muffled bang. “Did you do it?”
“Yes. Done.”
“Forgotten?”
“Forever, Mr. Ravich.”
“Thank you, Lionel.”
“Goodbye, Mr. Ravich!”
“HELLO, MR. RAVICH!” exclaimed Mr. Lo, waving for Charlie to sit in a deep chair with doilies on the arms, the traditional Chinese meeting chair. He and Tom Anderson had arrived at the scaffolding company’s offices—new but so poorly constructed as to already seem decades old—and been greeted in the lobby by a trio of Mr. Lo’s sons, three skinny men with bad teeth who spoke almost no English.
Afterburn: A Novel Page 39