Insiders

by Olivia Goldsmith

  ‘Look,’ Cher said. ‘I know I haven’t treated you well and I know you probably don’t like me or trust me and I don’t blame you. But you can’t blame me for the way I used to treat you because you used to be a bitch.’

  Jennifer stiffened. ‘What’s your point, Cher? Did you drag me out to insult me?’

  ‘No, I mean you changed.’ Cher calmed her down. ‘When you first got to prison you walked in it like you were God’s only child and we were dirt. And I’m willing to admit that I took attitude against you but I think you can understand why.’

  Jennifer interrupted. ‘Well, you were a real bitch to me when I first came in.’

  Cher nodded. ‘I know I was, and for that I’m sorry. Once I saw you being so good to Suki and to Movita, and then when I saw what you did when you found out about what those bastards were up to at JRU, I was really impressed. And I don’t impress easy. You jumped right the fuck in.’

  Jennifer couldn’t stop herself from smiling. She’d never heard Cher praise her before.

  Cher continued. ‘I know you took a risk doin’ that. It was good of you. And what ya’ done since, well I don’t think no one but you coulda done it. Oh, the Prez, she woulda wanted to, but she didn’t know how.’

  ‘Cher, if you were so impressed with me,’ Jennifer had to say, ‘then why’d you get out and take over my life?’

  ‘Let me finish,’ Cher insisted. ‘I gotta tell my story my way. That’s just the way I am.’

  Jennifer signaled the waiter for another glass of wine. She was going to need it.

  ‘You took the best each person had to give and you found a way to make it work for the good of everyone,’ Cher continued. ‘And there wasn’t nothin’ in that for you. I thought you were a selfish bitch, and suddenly, to tell you the truth, I had to admit you’d changed. By the time I stole you that cell phone and got it set up for you, I was startin’ to kinda like ya’.’

  Jennifer was getting a little tipsy from the wine. ‘I liked you too, Cher. You know I couldn’t have done it without that cell phone.’

  ‘Oh, you woulda found a way,’ Cher insisted. ‘Anyway, you don’t have to believe me or nothing. I can disappear long before you can stop me. But the point is I didn’t do this to hurt you or steal from you.’

  ‘How can you say that when you’re sitting there in my suit?’ Jennifer protested. Suddenly, she looked around the restaurant, wondering if anyone was overhearing this crazy conversation. She bet that the Mercer Kitchen had never been witness to a conversation between two ex-convicts before.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ Cher admitted. ‘At first I needed a place to crash and I thought maybe I’d wear your clothes for a little while, but then, well, I heard what you were doing and I just thought someone should do something for you.’

  Jennifer almost spat up her wine. ‘What? How is living in my place for free and stealing my clothes and my boyfriend your idea of a reward?’

  ‘Shit, girl, I wouldn’t fuck him for money.’ Cher took a swig of water. ‘I established myself. It didn’t take me long to get a new social security number and a new name and I got a job. I’m working on the Street.’ She lifted her eyebrows. ‘Not as a prostitute, on Wall Street. I found a boiler room a friend of mine had set up and from that I moved up to a discount brokerage firm, but I was sellin’ so much goddamn stock that the sons-of-bitches kept moving me up and now I’m managing portfolios.’

  ‘Cher!’ she said. ‘What do you know about portfolio management?’ She couldn’t believe her. But it was an even crazier story to make up.

  Cher grinned. ‘I know enough to get your boyfriend to put his money in my hands.’ Jennifer raised her brows. Tom was greedy, but he was very cautious. ‘I doubt that,’ she said.

  ‘Hey, look. We got an expression: No one easier to con than a con.’ She paused. ‘Okay, I admit I had to have him put a few other things in my hands, but it was a small price to pay.’

  ‘A small price to pay for what?’ Jennifer asked, completely out of patience.

  ‘For watching him go broke,’ Cher said with a deeply satisfied smile. ‘He doesn’t know it yet but I’ve put him into every bad deal I could find. I’ve given him positions even a contortionist couldn’t survive.’ She laughed. ‘But that isn’t all,’ she said.

  Jennifer laughed, too. She couldn’t take all this in. ‘What do you mean? There’s more?’

  The lunch crowd had begun to thin out and Jennifer was on her third glass of wine. It was going to her head more than in the old days, before the eleven-month abstinence of prison.

  Cher nodded. ‘I also got copies of all of Tom’s files and I have the goods on him and Donald Michaels on your deal and a few previous ones. In writing: contracts and memos signed by them.’

  Jennifer shook her head. ‘But how did you gain Tom’s trust? Didn’t he find you in my apartment?’

  ‘I just told him I was a friend of yours, and once I got set up at my new job, he believed me. It’s amazing how gullible these smart guys can be,’ Cher shrugged. ‘Hey, Jen – were you ever raped in prison?’

  Jennifer turned white. She’d heard too many stories. ‘No, thank God.’

  ‘Well, Tommy boy is a little too pretty for his own good. I’m tellin’ you once we get his lily ass in prison, that bitch is gonna be cleanin’ somebody else’s house.’ Cher smirked. Then she reached into her pocket. She took out a big wad of cash. ‘Look, I owe ya’ this from when I first moved in. I had to use some of your charge cards and shit and here’s all the rent I woulda paid ya’. I’m not even askin’ for a discount.’ She handed Jennifer a wad of bills. All hundreds.

  Jennifer looked down at the roll and wouldn’t count it right then, but there had to be ten, maybe fifteen thousand dollars, maybe more. She stuffed it into her new purse. And to think she had been worried about money when she shopped yesterday afternoon.

  ‘Thanks, Cher,’ Jennifer said finally. ‘I didn’t expect this.’

  ‘I know ya’ didn’t,’ Cher said. ‘But listen, if you still want to turn me in you can call the police, or Tom, or my parole officer, who – by the way – I’m fuckin’ too, and he knows how to do it.’

  ‘No, Cher, I would never –’ Jennifer started.

  Cher cut her off. ‘Good, ‘cause what I’d like, what I’d really like is for you to just get back at these guys who railroaded you and then maybe leave me in my job without blowin’ the whistle. I never thought I’d say it, but I kinda like being legit. Not that it’s all that different from what I used to do.’

  The waiter came by to see if Jennifer wanted more wine. ‘Actually, I’ll have a Cosmopolitan,’ Jennifer said. This sounded like a celebration.

  Cher made eyes up to the ceiling. ‘Oh, Christ, Deb. Nobody drinks those anymore.’ Cher ordered a top-shelf, single-malt scotch on the rocks.

  Jennifer just had to sit there for a few minutes to take it all in. ‘So, I still don’t get something.’

  ‘You need me to tell you the whole friggin’ story again?’ Cher asked.

  ‘No,’ Jennifer said. ‘Just tell me again, how did you get Tom to trust you?’

  Cher laughed. ‘Oh, come on. These kinda guys never think women have enough brains to screw them. We’re the screwees. All I had to do was offer it up and hang around for the ride. If ya’ keep your mouth shut most of the time except when you’re praising them or they’ve got their dick in it, they’ll believe anything. Don’t pretend you don’t know that.’

  Jennifer stared at Cher and then she began to laugh. ‘You,’ she said, ‘are a real piece of work.’

  Luckily, their drinks arrived just then, and they were able to toast to that.

  ‘Duh,’ Cher teased her. ‘And you just noticed, huh? No wonder they could railroad you so easy.’

  Jennifer didn’t take offense. It was true, so she began to laugh and laugh and then for a few minutes she actually couldn’t stop. It was a little frightening, but all of the adjustments that she had had to make in the last twenty-four hours, from leaving Jenni
ngs to her shock at the apartment to her spending spree and her incredibly wonderful night with Lenny upstairs at the hotel were, she had to admit, a bit much for any girl.

  Cher pushed her hand from across the table. ‘Don’t you go off on me,’ she said. But then she started to laugh, too. ‘Friends?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ Jen said. ‘Friends. But let me tell you about the little plan that I’ve worked out that you might want to help me with.’ She leaned forward. ‘Do you really think Movita and Suki and Theresa should still be in prison?’ she asked.

  ‘Holy shit,’ Cher said. ‘I am not getting involved in a fuckin’ jail break.’

  Jennifer laughed again. ‘Oh, come on, Cher. I appreciate the compliment but I’m not that bold, or that stupid. Still, I do have a plan.’ She leaned forward again and quietly began explaining.

  50

  Jennifer Spencer

  You’re so sure you’re not going back to the same crowd. But pretty soon you be hanging out with the same ol’ crowd again, just to feel like you belong somewhere.

  Theresa Derry, an inmate at SCI Muncy, Pennsylvania.

  Kathryn Watterson, Women in Prison

  Jennifer went over every detail with Lenny to make sure that she hadn’t left anything out. He had to admit two things: that the plan could work, and that he wouldn’t mind staying on at the Mercer for a little while. ‘It’s just for the towels,’ he said.

  Jennifer laughed, grabbed him around the neck with the crook of her arm and pulled him down onto the bed. ‘Miss Spencer,’ he said. ‘What are you thinking of? The chambermaids just made this bed.’

  ‘Dumb move,’ she said, and then she showed him a few of her own.

  Later, stretched out in the bathtub, she thought she’d never take a bath again without appreciating it. Now, when she looked back, she realized that she had thought she knew Lenny, but she hadn’t appreciated him. She shook her head, wetting her hair. Well, she’d have a professional cut today to prepare her for this evening’s showdown. She thought for a few moments about what other preparations she might need. Cher promised to have the written records and the computerized ones of the questionable Hudson, Van Schaank transactions ready. Lenny, she was sure, could serve as a witness with a lot of clout since, unlike herself and Cher, he was not a convicted felon. She allowed her feet to float in the deep tub and stared up at the ceiling. She wondered why these rooms, so simple as to almost be stark, were beautifully pleasant while the rooms at Jennings were so hideously ugly. She stared up at the white ceiling and let her entire body float on the warm pillow of bath water.

  Lenny lay asleep in their bed. He was an amazing lover, and she wondered if he always had been or if this was a special effort inspired by her. If it was the former she’d just been stupid and blind; if it was the latter she was touched and grateful. Speaking of touched, she felt her fingers pruning up. Underwater they looked like white raisins. Perhaps she’d been in the bath long enough. She looked over at the white freesia that Lenny had bought for her. She could smell them from the tub, though they weren’t splashy or even particularly rare. They were just beautiful, the green of their stems so perfect, long and thin as dancers, the white of their blossoms creamy, and the graceful way the blossom moved horizontally across an extension perpendicular to the stem, with each flower or bud getting smaller and smaller. Oh, it broke her heart that she had gone without a single blossom for almost a year. She stopped and counted. Well, there had been the chrysanthemums at Christmas and Springtime’s marigolds, but she didn’t think she could ever like those flowers again.

  Prison had wasted more than eleven months of her life, but wouldn’t they have been equally wasted at Hudson, Van Schaank? All she’d been doing, her apartment, her antiques, her Kirmans, and her portfolios … When she’d been sent to Jennings she had been a selfish, narrow young woman. She had lost touch with her old friends and didn’t have any new ones – except for her so-called fiancé and her boss, both of whom turned out to be … she searched for Lenny’s term. Oh yes, yellow rat bastards. Her judgment, her values, her goals, and her viewpoints had all been questionable. Prison had set her free. She knew the most important thing wasn’t how much money she made, or how successful her next deal was, or how many people envied and respected her, or how powerful her friends were. She shivered, though the tub water was still warm. She had taken for granted all of life’s most important pleasures and she had been a pouting child when they’d been taken away from her. She had never admitted her guilt, nor taken responsibility for losing her way as she had. Jennings had been dreadful, but through imprisonment she’d found freedom. She was no longer afraid. She didn’t need to keep a big apartment, or a large paycheck, or a big wardrobe. She needed to keep her friends, and her freedom. She wanted to be free of fear.

  Though she had changed, one thing in New York certainly hadn’t. Balthazar was still the hottest restaurant in the city and dinner there on a Friday night wasn’t easy to plan. The room was massive and the crowd was loud. The décor was such a perfect re-creation of a French bistro that she had heard the O’Malley brothers had actually imported French dust that they had ground into the tile floors. The red banquettes with chairs opposite were desirable, but not as desirable as the semicircular seating on the east and south wall. Above them hung squares of old mirrors pieced together to form large mirrors, ornately framed. The ceiling, a dark beige pressed-tin, still had a few playing cards stuck to it where previous parties had taken place. Jen remembered a Christmas party where Donald Michaels had reserved the whole restaurant for a soiree. A magician had been hired and one of the tricks was to have a participant sign his name to a random card in a deck. When all the cards were thrown into the air the only one that stuck to the ceiling was the one that had been signed. Jen looked down at her own feet as she and Lenny entered. Her foot was beautifully covered in the new Otto Tootsie Plohound shoes. The floors were beautifully covered in tiny mosaic tiles. They walked through the crowd to the deep mahogany bar, but it was so crowded that Lenny took her to the back where all the luscious seafood was laid out on beds of crushed ice.

  It was a good place from which to observe the crowd, a combination of downtown hipsters, Wall Streeters, beautiful women, and the occasional rich family or older couple celebrating some anniversary or event. Despite the crowd it was easy to spot Tom and Cher when they came in. Cher, who seemed to have given up her flamboyant style, still managed to glow. While she had adopted a patina of pampered grooming there was still something raw and vibrant about her that shined through. For a moment Jennifer could hardly bear to look at Tom – not because she still loved him but because she was ashamed that she had ever thought she did. He looked so untouchable and self-satisfied that for a moment she really wondered if she could pull this off. His harsh judgment of Lenny and his offloading of her weren’t justified by his smooth good looks, his perfectly tailored suit, and his aura of impeccable breeding. Then she pulled herself together and got ready.

  They were seated at table fifty-three – one of the best circular banquettes – by Zuair, the maitre d’. ‘Let’s go,’ she told Lenny, and took his hand for a moment. He gave her hand a squeeze, as if he knew she’d been shaken. She led the way through the crowd.

  ‘Well, hello,’ she said, looking down at the two of them. Tom looked up and for a moment his face froze. Then he managed a smile.

  ‘Oh, surely we’re not going to have another scene, Jennifer.’ He looked over at Lenny and registered surprise, or was it … contempt? Whatever it was, it enraged her.

  ‘A scene?’ she asked. ‘Certainly not.’ And she slid into the banquette next to him while Lenny slid beside Cher. There was no way he could get out, short of ducking under the table and scrabbling away. She knew Tom well enough to know that he’d rather die than make a public spectacle.

  ‘I don’t remember asking you to join us,’ Tom said. ‘Lenny, why don’t you take Jennifer out of here.’

  ‘Why don’t you listen to what Jennifer has to sa
y,’ Lenny told him.

  Tom turned to Cher. ‘I’m sorry about this,’ he said. ‘It’s almost like having a stalker.’

  ‘Shut up, you motherfucker,’ Cher told him.

  Tom blinked. ‘What?’ he managed to ask, as if his ears couldn’t take the obscenity in.

  ‘Shut the fuck up, you douche, and listen to Jennifer before I get your knees broken.’

  Tom blinked again. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said.

  ‘Well, it’s necessary that you do,’ Jennifer said. ‘Now listen, I’ll cut to the chase: I have all the documentation I need to put you in prison for the next ten years at least. And believe me, it won’t be a country club.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said.

  ‘I’m talking about the Anderson deal, the Thompson acquisition. I’m talking about your insider position on the Bayler-Crups merger. I’m talking about the secret purchases you’ve made for Donald. That’s leaving out how you perjured yourself and misrepresented my case. It’s also leaving out Donald, and how he’d throw you to the wolves in a heartbeat – if he had a heart. If it would protect his ass from the FCC.’

  ‘I have more,’ Lenny added. ‘And some of it I witnessed. I can testify under oath.’

  ‘Do you think you’re scaring me?’ Tom asked.

  ‘I don’t really care how you feel,’ Jennifer told him. ‘I’m just telling you the drill: You go to Donald. You get me the money he owes me – the money he promised me – as well as a pardon from the governor.’ She handed him a piece of paper. ‘And you get a pardon for these women as well.’