The Hazards of Good Fortune

by Seth Greenland

  “Franklin, it’s okay,” Christine Lupo said. He looked at her questioningly but did not release his grip. “Let the lady speak.”

  Under his breath, he hissed, “Goddammit.”

  Nicole wrenched her arm away and said to Franklin, “You’re a putz.”

  How much had she imbibed? There were the two glasses of wine at the Oak Bar, two at the loft—wait, no, one and a half at the loft. She wasn’t that drunk. A little food might help. Perhaps she’d grab a canapé on her way out. Nicole cleared her throat and focused on the district attorney: “The people here tonight, who have a lot more in common with my husband than they do with that poor black man who got killed by a policeman, they’re all nodding in agreement because by crucifying Jay you absolve them of their sins.”

  She waited now, pleased with her insight, the freedom with which she expressed it, and wondering if Christine Lupo would respond. Would the Christian reference disturb Marcy? She had more: “Who made you Pontius Pilate?” The smile on Nicole’s face after delivering the last barb was disreputable and rakishly appealing, the kind one uncharitably recalls when sobriety reasserts itself. Nicole deployed it like a ninja.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Gladstone,” Christine Lupo said from the front of the room. Her manner was noncombative. “You look better in person than you do on the Internet.”

  There was a brief pause while the refined attendees contemplated whether it was permissible to display their delight at this insult, concluded that Nicole deserved it, and burst into sustained laughter followed by applause. Nicole felt hot, blinding shame that rose from her feet to her calves, her hips, belly, up through her back, flaming her neck and thickening her tongue. The entire room was mocking her. Why had she not left ten minutes earlier? Why had she come at all?

  Christine Lupo concluded with, “I can’t comment on a pending case.”

  Bebe was at her side. They were in the elevator. The air in the street refreshed her.

  “That was impressive,” Bebe said.

  “I don’t care what those assholes think of me.”

  Bebe asked if she was all right and Nicole told her she was, and that calling out Christine Lupo was liberating. Heckling was not Bebe’s style, but she was impressed with Nicole’s commitment, rash though it might have seemed. Her brother was already in bad shape. It was hard to see how his wife’s outburst could make it worse.

  They chatted about the presidential election during the cab ride uptown.

  Nicole hoped Bebe would tell Jay exactly what his wife had done, although she wasn’t going to ask her. If Jay’s sister performed that modest task, the wretched humiliation Nicole experienced in Franklin’s penthouse would be worth it.

  What was it Franklin had told her? Everyone’s sorry your phone got hacked. How did he know someone hacked her? None of the accounts she read had mentioned that detail. No one knew that that horrid clip had come from her phone. What else would have provided it? No one used video cameras anymore. Franklin had assumed—that was all. But the more she thought about it, the less sense her conjecture made. Franklin wasn’t clever enough to guess something like that. When she returned to the hotel Nicole sent the following text to her husband:

  Franklin hacked my phone. He’s the leaker.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  It was a serene Christine Lupo that gazed across the East River at the Queens skyline from the backseat of her town car as Russell Plesko drove north on the FDR. Pagano’s request had gone through, and the cop had been assigned to the DA’s office where he filled in on an as-needed basis. The evening had been an unmitigated triumph. Christine’s ability to charm a roomful of New York City honchos had her thrumming with confidence. They didn’t just respond to the message—they loved her. Her policies, humor, and improvisatory ability combined to showcase considerable political skills and all of it resonated with the donor base. Even that slatternly wife of Jay Gladstone was a gift. The interruption had allowed the district attorney to display poise, forbearance, and quick-wittedness. The woman had opened fire with both barrels and Christine had crushed her without sacrificing likeability. What a nasty person that pipe-cleaner skinny, entitled, rich bitch seemed to be. Christine thought of the Bronx nuns who taught her at Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow. They would have loved the poke she delivered. What kind of depraved world was this where people leaked sex tapes on the Internet? She wondered if the woman had done it herself. This suspicion made her think of Dominic Lupo and the personal dishonor she had suffered as a result of his behavior. At least the evidence of his sexual incontinence wasn’t smeared all over the Internet.

  Poor Jay Gladstone. She immediately froze the sympathy she felt and examined it. The declaration became a question: Poor Jay Gladstone? Yes, yes, he was a man made of blood and sinew and a beating heart. Christine Lupo understood what it was like to have a spouse who was a curse. Her quarry was an estimable man—It’s what made him such valuable prey—brought down by a poor choice in mates. Certainly, his predicament was thornier than that, the car had not run over D’Angelo Maxwell by itself, but none of the auto-da-fé he was enduring would have occurred had his wife honored her marital vows. As for the fiasco that had taken place in the basketball arena, the man had paid for his sins in the currency of shame.

  These thoughts created a disturbance in her well-ordered moral universe. Before this evening, Jay Gladstone was only a prominent citizen charged with crimes, an abstraction. But seeing his wife tonight—flushed face, firing squad eyes—listening to her aria of abuse, had brought Jay into sharper focus, and the picture that formed was of a human being who was suffering. And suffering caused by a cheating spouse was something about which Christine was not without sympathy.

  Then what of mercy? Well, mercy was not exactly hers to dispense, was it? That was more God’s bailiwick. Why was she even thinking these thoughts? Sin and mercy were not helpful when considering a defendant in a pending criminal case. Sin and mercy were ideas, and she needed to stick to facts. If the luxury of a Jesuitical debate were permitted, she would never prosecute anyone. Many of the accused that came under her purview had partners who betrayed them. Humanizing a defendant was against the rules.

  As the car sailed over the Third Avenue Bridge and north on the Major Deegan Expressway, Christine realized that something about Jay had been peeled back by his wife’s presence and it kept niggling at her because it felt familiar. She and Jay were public people with families in the process of fracturing. Until recently, they both had been paragons, the kind of citizens others were encouraged to emulate. The vehicular assault charges he faced? Had she not done something similar in the parking lot at work? Sean Purcell had bumped a demonstrator with her official vehicle. Knocked the woman down. A black woman, no less. It wasn’t on the cataclysmic scale of what Jay had done but to pretend there was no parallel would be disingenuous. Had that been racially motivated? Of course not! Moreover, Christine knew it was an accident. By a stroke of luck, no one had reported that incident. Who knows what cynics might have made of it? What if what Jay had done was an accident? What if his lawyer’s claims were accurate? Was she persecuting him? Reasonable people might disagree on whether there was a political tinge to the initial indictment and the subsequent hate crime charge but Jay Gladstone would get his day in court. That was the beauty of the system. She needed to stop seeing moral equivalence where there was none. Ultimately, all that united them was philandering spouses. It was impossible to have anything in common with someone so wealthy. Still, her cerebral push and pull would not cease.

  They were riding east on the Cross-Westchester Express­way.

  “Russell, what do you think about Jay Gladstone? Do you think he’s guilty?”

  Plesko did not answer right away. Christine waited. She didn’t want to influence him so did not offer a further prompt.

  “Permission to speak frankly?”

  “Granted,” she said.

 
“He did it, that’s pretty obvious. But did he mean to do it?”

  “That’s what I’m asking.”

  “People wanted to hang me,” Plesko said. “Like they could all read my mind. But no one can do that. I don’t care who they are. If Gladstone says it was an accident, I believe him.”

  “Even after what he witnessed? He accidentally ran over the man he caught with his wife?”

  Plesko adjusted the rearview mirror so he could see his passenger. “Does he seem like a violent guy to you?”

  “I indicted him.”

  “Hey, look, you gave me a break, and I’ll always be grateful for it.”

  “Tell me what you think,” the DA said.

  “I guess you can’t let everyone off.”

  With all the certainty at her disposal, she declared: “Jay Gladstone has had enough breaks.”

  By the time she climbed out of the car in her driveway Christine had convinced herself it was true.

  Her mind returned to Jay as she lay in bed. Their fathers were both men of the Bronx, first-generation Americans who served in World War II, raised families in New York, pillars of their respective communities. Bingo Gladstone was a version of Mario Lupo with a lot more money. Like something caught between her teeth, the similarities continued to nag her. To her growing consternation, all of it added to this nascent kinship with Jay that she found harder and harder to dismiss.

  Twenty minutes later, when she could not fall asleep, Christine went to the kitchen to make a cup of herbal tea. As she waited for the water to boil, she booted up her laptop. Jay had an extensive online presence. Christine skimmed sports pages and business sites, noted his philanthropic activities and the awards he had received. There was a group photograph with Archbishop Desmond Tutu celebrating Universal Children’s Day that she had previously missed. It was not the profile of a criminal.

  When the kettle whistled, she brewed the tea, spooned honey into the cup, and returned to the computer. On a real estate site, she typed in Jay’s Bedford address, which for reasons Christine did not want to think about she knew by memory. Up came a single photograph and a description. The image of the palatial house on a hundred and twenty acres, with pool house, barn, paddock, and bridle paths did not produce resentment or envy or in any way stick in the DA’s craw. Jay Gladstone had Sultan of Brunei money, but he employed thousands of people and paid untold millions of taxes into the public treasury. In her view, this was how America was meant to work.

  Since the separation from her husband, Christine occasionally found herself missing, not Dominic Lupo exactly, but the companionship he had provided. Case in point: The night of the incinerated T-shirt on the backyard grill. Had Dominic been there, she would have asked him to play the heavy. Something in her had loosened. It was energizing.

  She finished the tea, rinsed the cup, and put it in the dishwasher. Went upstairs, but instead of getting into bed, she slipped on a pair of jeans and a sweater. Checked on her sleeping children and went downstairs. Closing the back door quietly behind her, she climbed into her black Lexus sedan, slipped La Boheme into the CD player, and backed out of the garage.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Just after eight the same evening, Bobby Tackman arrived at Jay’s Bedford estate to conduct a simulated interview in preparation for the real one. The communications expert reviewed a list of fifty likely questions and made sure his client had responses to each of them. The theme of the evening was Apology. Keep apologizing, he advised. Then apologize some more, and you will be redeemed because America loves a redemption story.

  When Tackman left, Jay called Herman Doomer. A team of attorneys was preparing to wage war with the league, but the lawyer warned him that when facing a player boycott, their influence was limited. “You have to knock this interview out of the park,” Doomer said. Jay asked what was going on with the Planning Commission regarding the Sapphire situation. Doomer had made inquiries, but as far as he knew, no new information was available. Jay had hoped to hear from Aviva since he had withdrawn from participating in the commencement, but she had not returned his calls. With all of this on his mind, he shambled to bed.

  It was a surprise to find the house situated on a dirt road bounded by low walls built from stones. This evocation of the rural past left Christine strangely moved. She, too, yearned for a time before the current fractiousness, when America had a common purpose. What were Jay’s political preferences? Her Internet scavenging revealed he had made contributions to Democrats and Republicans. What he believed in, she recognized, was the efficacy of the system.

  She parked on the road in front of the property, turned off the headlights but left the engine idling. The night was cloudless, pricked with stars, and a half moon impassively shone. Although the house was dark, several security lights painted the grounds in pale yellow. A single light illuminated an upstairs window. Probably on a timer, she thought. From a fawning profile on Forbes.com, she knew Jay owned horses and wondered if whoever looked after them lived on the premises. Lowering the car window, she inhaled the pleasing earthy scent. An owl broadcast its presence. A breeze disturbed the branches. Homes like this one often had security cameras, but none were visible.

  She placed her hand on the steering wheel and saw her bare ring finger, moonlit. For ten minutes, she observed the house. No cars passed. Christine had never done anything remotely like this. The burning of her son’s T-shirt, she knew, was indicative of the heightened emotional state she was in, but this amounted to stalking. As long as it did not become a habit, she believed her behavior on this night was justifiable. How else to get a feel for her adversary if not by entering his world? She wanted to know what it was like to be this man, to live in storybook surroundings with a gorgeous young wife and a geyser that spouted money. She imagined him riding a horse along the edge of a luminous meadow, wind at his back, savoring yet another victory. And then he was not alone. There she was, Christine Lupo, the girl from Arthur Avenue, astride a golden palomino. The two of them, together in the gloaming, the broad land spread out intoxicatingly before them, like a Technicolor movie. She could almost hear the brass and strings swell on the soundtrack. Christine had never ridden a horse. Once, as a girl, her father had put her on a pony at a church fair in Yonkers. What was she doing on an imaginary horse next to Jay Gladstone riding into a Hollywood sunset? Smirking at the silliness of it, she repressed the vision. Jay Gladstone and Christine Lupo together in a sylvan fantasy, on horses, no less. It was ridiculous.

  Jay was drifting off when Nicole’s text arrived. Was Franklin the mastermind? Nicole certainly thought so. It was impossible to know if she was drunk and raving, or if it was true. He turned off his phone, but could not get back to sleep. For half an hour, he lay in bed listening to the night and trying to slow his rampaging mind. Was Franklin capable of treachery on this level? It was not beyond the realm of possibility. But could he have acted so aggressively? Jay did not realize he possessed that degree of malevolence. Perhaps he had underestimated him. As reprehensible as it was, Jay had to give his cousin credit. The sheer chutzpah of the gesture was impressive.

  The road in front of the house rarely saw nocturnal traffic and Jay listened as a car engine hummed in the distance increasing in volume as it rolled past and then died away. Several minutes later he heard another car. It got louder as it drew nearer but then the sound did not recede. A lone vehicle in the middle of the night was not a welcome sound. Someone had parked in front of the property. He lay there for a few seconds, but when he did not hear the car go away, he climbed out of bed, crossed the hall, and entered a guest bedroom in the front of the house where a timer light was on.

  Sitting in the car, Christine was in a reverie. Dominic was gone, she had a career-making case on her hands, and with adroit handling, there was no reason she could not spin it into political gold. Thomas Dewey was a New York prosecutor, and he had nearly become president. No one knew how far she could g
o. Then the light in Jay Gladstone’s upstairs window went out.

  Jay immediately saw the car at the end of his driveway. It was not there because of a flat tire. Whoever it was, they were there for him. In a way, he had wanted this. It was why he was reluctant to be saddled with personal security even after the rampage at the arena. He went to the safe, opened the combination lock. Removed the gun, felt the heft of the weapon in his hand. Checked the clip. Fifteen rounds. Boris had shown him how to shoot.

  He walked downstairs and sat in a chair facing the front door with the weapon on his lap. He thought about prison versus death and concluded death might be preferable. He wished he could have resolved the situation with Aviva. His will was in order. The floor was cool against the soles of his bare feet. He wondered who would say Kaddish for him.

  After sitting there for ten minutes, his nerve failed him, and he called the police. The cop on duty the night of the accident arrived at the house. Officer Wysocki. He acted like he was pleased to see Jay and asked how he was doing. He told Jay there were no other cars on the road.

  When Wysocki left, Jay drove into the city.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  The next morning, he did not make the mistake of arriving at the office alone. Behind a flying wedge of corn-fed security, he made it through the demonstrators without incident. He had coffee. He met with Bebe and Boris and briefed them on his preparations with Tackman. The Sapphire matter was taking suspiciously long to resolve and Bebe told him she was going to reach out to someone she knew in the city bureaucracy to find out what was going on. Jay told Boris to prepare to fly to Hong Kong the following week to familiarize himself with the Asian branch of the business and brief Bebe when he returned. When the confab was over, Bebe stayed behind and reported what Nicole had done at Franklin’s house the previous evening. They were in the sitting area of Jay’s office. He tilted his head back and closed his eyes.