The Darlings

by Cristina Alger

  Endicott Farms wasn’t so much a house as a collection of them. Nikos and Medora had purchased two eighteenth-century saltbox houses from Vermont, a barn from New Hampshire, and a stone schoolhouse from upstate New York and had, beam by beam, taken them apart and reassembled them on the parcel of land at the corner of Lily Pond Lane and Ocean Avenue. Together, the buildings formed a sprawling compound that bore little resemblance to any of the original structures. In Carter’s opinion, it looked more like a boarding school than a home. There was something campuslike about Endicott Farms: It boasted an indoor squash court and an outdoor tennis court; a swimming pool and a croquet pitch; and though the main house had eight bedrooms, two stand-alone guest cottages dotted the lawn. “For the help . . . and for Medora’s parents,” Nikos like to joke at parties.

  Carter couldn’t see it from the gate, but behind the compound was a large slate terrace overlooking the ocean. Every summer, the Kaspers had a Fourth of July cocktail party on the terrace for three hundred of their closest friends. Carter and Ines always attended. Though the Kaspers threw a great many parties, this one was definitively referred to as “the Kasper Party.” Ines claimed the Kasper party was one of the highlights of her summer, but Carter quietly loathed it. Though they had known each other for fifty years, Nikos still introduced Carter as “my banker.” He usually threw in a complimentary tagline, but Carter resented the intonation. It seemed to imply that he should step around the bar and start mixing martinis with the rented bartenders.

  At the end of the day, both men were aware of the fact that a good banker was more valuable than a good friend. If Nikos wasn’t yet bankrupt, he had Carter to thank for it. Carter had been managing Nikos’s money since his days at JPMorgan. At the start, their professional relationship was as uncomfortable as it had been at Harvard. It had been an unpleasant coincidence that Carter was put on the Kasper account as a junior banker at JPMorgan. At the time, the account was too big, and Carter was too junior, for him to protest the arrangement. Carter had done what he did best: swallow his pride and put his nose to the grindstone.

  Long ago, Carter had accepted that he held only a guest pass to the world of the very rich, and, unlike men like Nikos, he would have to earn his keep in order to stay. But that changed when he went into business with Alain Duvalier. Alain was a great investor, but he was difficult to work with, hotheaded and always right. He liked his cars too fast and women too young, just generally a little “too too,” as Ines liked to say with a roll of the eyes, for a white-glove place like JPMorgan Private Banking. He had more than one enemy in the upper echelons of senior management.

  Carter moved in on him the moment he heard Alain had been passed over as head of asset management. Everyone was talking about it. Carter knew exactly how to play it. Alain had expensive tastes and a well-developed ego; he would operate best in an environment where he could be his own boss. At Delphic, Alain could have everything he wanted: an office in Geneva; a big cut of the equity; and best of all, total freedom to do business as he pleased. Carter would bring in the clients and stay out of his hair. They would make perfect partners.

  Alain was expensive, but worth every penny. Among other things, he was the reason Delphic was in business with Morty Reis. Carter was never quite sure of the connection, but it had something to do with their sisters being friends. Whatever it was, Carter was grateful for it. If delivering Morty was the only thing Alain had ever done for him, it was enough. In their first five years of business, RCM knocked it out of the park. On average, the fund returned 14 percent annually, an untouchable record. The press began to call. Clients turned up on Carter’s doorstep. Many of Carter’s old JPMorgan clients who had originally been too risk averse to put money in a new venture came to him, hat in hand.

  Nikos and Althea Kasper didn’t, but they agreed to have lunch with him. They met at the Four Seasons. At the time, Carter could barely afford the lunch tab much less conceive of moving the Delphic headquarters to the fancy offices just upstairs. Carter remembered vividly how cool Nikos had been at that initial lunch. While Althea was enthusing about the fund’s performance (the only thing that ever animated Althea was the prospect of more money), Nikos took a call in the lobby. When he returned to the table, he offered a tepid congratulations, as though he was talking to a sixth grader who had won the science fair. He picked at his steak tartare as though it bored him. It was half eaten when Carter paid the bill.

  No matter. Carter walked away from that lunch two million dollars richer. Over the next ten years, Nikos and Althea migrated 60 percent of their combined net worth over to Delphic. They brought their father in and several friends. They invited Carter to dinners, for golf, for Fourth of July.

  As Carter stood stretching at the Kasper gate, pain radiated down his left side. He couldn’t identify its locus. At first he thought it was a cramp, but as he stretched, the pain rolled upward like a wave. Soon it filled his torso and he found it difficult to breath. His head spun from the lack of air and he could feel tears forming at the corners of his eyes.

  I’m having a heart attack, he thought, and lay down in the grass by the side of the road.

  He closed his eyes and felt the grass shoots pricking at the back of his neck. The ground was wet and hard. He wondered how long it would be before a car passed by. A driver would stop if he saw him like this.

  A plane passed overhead. Carter wondered where Julianne was, if they had gotten her home from Aspen. He would have to call Sol and check. Ines had been merciless about Julianne the night before. Carter winced as he replayed their conversation. Ines was disarmingly direct. She said what others were thinking but dared not say (Recently: “Oh please, Althea Kasper is more than a man-eater, she’s a bull-dyke lesbian”; “I didn’t get to where I am by being nice.”). Ines could be callous, even cruel, but she was almost never wrong.

  About Julianne, Ines said: “Tell me it wasn’t your first thought.”

  She was right. The possibility that Julianne had killed Morty had occurred to Carter right away. He had dismissed it, admonishing himself for even considering it. Julianne wasn’t capable of that, and in her own way, she did seem to care for Morty. Carter wouldn’t allow himself to think anything else. Still, while Carter would never say so out loud, there was a certain cold logic to it.

  “And if he did kill himself, she pushed him to it,” Ines had said. “Their marriage was empty. You know that as well as anybody.”

  Again, Ines was right.

  Eventually, the pain in his side subsided and all Carter felt was the numbing cold of the air around him. When he heard the sound of car tires on gravel he popped to his feet. He brushed dirt from his leg. Thirty yards away, a car pulled out of a driveway. The driver turned to the left and disappeared down Lily Pond Lane, unaware of the man who had been, for the past ten minutes, lying by the side of the road. Charged with embarrassment, he sprinted to the house, not stopping until he had reached the safety of his own front porch.

  Carter’s BlackBerry was vibrating against the kitchen counter as he swung open the screen door. Bacall let out a yowl and barreled toward his knees, his nails clicking against the tiles. Carter shushed him halfheartedly and rubbed his head, just behind the ears, while he tried to scroll through his e-mails.

  “Everyone is asleep, kiddo, except for you and me,” he said affectionately. He loved this dog. Their loyalty to each other was absolute. Ines would never love Bacall the way Carter did; at her core, she wasn’t a dog person. Bacall knew which side his bread was buttered on. His leg thumped furiously as Carter hit the exact spot behind the ear that sent him into throes of canine ecstasy.

  Carter retreated to his office, allowing Bacall to follow before he shut the door behind them. Bacall nested in his tartan dog bed while Carter turned on his computer and plugged his BlackBerry into its dock. He looked at the clock: 7:30 a.m. on the dot. He had about twenty-nine minutes before Ines began banging things inexplicably in the kitchen. She hated it when he closed his office door.

/>   When she answered the phone, he said, “Is it too early?”

  She said, “Where the fuck have you been? I’ve been calling you.” Then she chuckled, reprimanding herself. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice softened. “Forgive me. It’s early.”

  He had intended to be cold with her. She should be expecting that; he hated it when she called him repeatedly. And yesterday, a three-ring circus of a day. If she had given it twenty seconds of consideration, she would have come up with a hundred reasons not to call. He would be with Ines. He would be with his kids. He would be driving to East Hampton. He would be frantically wrapping up preholiday business. He would be fielding calls from Sol, the media, portfolio managers, Merrill, Lily, Ines, clients, clients’ wives, his secretary, Sol’s secretary, Morty’s secretary. He would be calling emergency meetings and scheduling flights and setting up wire transfers. He would be alone in the bathroom, shedding private tears for his friend.

  But then he had heard her voice, and his anger had lifted like fog. She always did that to him, which is why he kept going back to her for more.

  “How are you?” she said. She was the first person who asked and meant it. Everyone else, including his wife, meant: “How is the fund?”

  “Well, not good. I don’t begin to know how to answer that question. How are you?”

  She said, “I’m a fucking mess. But that’s obvious. The hardest part of this is knowing I can’t be with you.”

  “I know. I hate that, too.”

  “Look, let’s just avoid platitudes. I know you’re probably at a loss here, too, but what do we do?”

  Carter leaned back in his chair and inhaled deeply. Eyes closed, he stopped breathing; the world went pleasantly blank. For a moment, he wondered if he could will himself dead.

  Then Bacall let out a yowl and Carter’s eyes opened. No, he thought, still here. Just barely.

  “We still don’t know why he killed himself,” he said. “All I can think is why the fuck would he do this to me? Not to himself, but to me. I know. I’m a selfish bastard.”

  “Everyone’s a selfish bastard. And God forgive me for saying this, but Morty’s the most selfish bastard of all. It’s a very selfish thing to do, suicide.”

  Suddenly, Carter realized he was angry. He hadn’t been able to identify it before, but the furious surge of energy that had been coursing through his body since yesterday was anger. Not at the situation, but at Morty himself. How could Morty have done this? Morty never made a move without a cost-benefit analysis. He would have precisely calculated the collateral damage of this decision. To Julianne, to Carter and Alain, to countless others whom Carter couldn’t even begin to name. He would have weighed it against whatever demons were driving him. And then Carter saw it: Morty was on one scale; everyone else was on the other. He had decided in favor of himself. Selfish fucking bastard. I was your friend.

  He sat up, feeling impatient with the conversation. “Look,” he said, “I feel like the world’s come down around my ears. I know it has for you, too, but I’m just going to have to take things minute to minute, and make decisions one at a time so that I don’t do anything stupid. It’s going to be intense for a while. For how long? I don’t know. Let’s say the foreseeable future. And I don’t think it’s smart for us to talk during this period. Much less be together, which is out of the question.”

  He stopped and took a deep breath. There was a quiet pause. His words had tumbled out, emotional, uncontrolled. She had this effect on him. He spoke more freely to her than to anyone else. Some days this felt amazing. He loved the release, the heady rush of being with her. Now, any interaction with her seemed dangerously stupid.

  “What does Ines know?” she said. She sounded matter-of-fact.

  “Ines knows nothing. Well, I don’t know; I think she has her suspicions. But she knows nothing from me. And it’ll stay that way. I need her support right now, to be frank. Morty just turned a big spotlight onto the fund and onto me. I already have everyone from the Wall Street Journal to the attorney general’s office knocking on my door and it’s fucking Thanksgiving. I can’t afford to be sloppy.”

  “She may be more supportive if you’re honest with her. I agree it’s best not to tell her now. If she starts getting angry and asking questions, you may just want to come clean with her. She’s a rational woman.”

  As ever, she was gracious, poised. Despite the situation, he was aroused.

  “Has the press called you?” he said.

  “Yes. But I haven’t spoken to anyone. Screw them. I’ll make a statement when I’m ready.”

  “Will you talk to Sol before you do that? I mean, just let him help you manage things. He knows how to deal with public attention.”

  “I know. I’m not stupid. But right now there’s no need for me to say anything about it, so I think my best strategy is to just stay quiet.”

  “You’re right. I’m being paranoid. I’m sorry. I want to be with you so badly. I know that’s wrong, but I can’t help it.”

  She didn’t respond right away. He wondered where she was. When they spoke, she was always on the cell phone so he never really knew. It was hard not to be able to picture her. He hated thinking that she would be spending Thanksgiving alone. The thought of it hurt him so much that he didn’t dare to ask. I’m a selfish bastard, he thought.

  “I don’t know,” she said, finally. “I only know that what’s moral is what you feel good after and what’s immoral is what you feel bad after.”

  He smiled. “Fitzgerald?”

  “Hemingway, actually.”

  “Clever girl,” he said. “Don’t ever let anyone underestimate you.”

  “I never do.”

  “Clever, beautiful girl.”

  “I have to go, Carter.”

  “I know. I love you,” he said and hung up. It was, he thought, one of the only true things he had said in as long as he could remember. It had been true for years. He looked over at Bacall, who was asleep on his bed. Above him, an antique nautical clock ticked away with maritime efficiency. The house was waking and the children would begin to arrive soon.

  The next call he made was to Sol.

  THURSDAY, 7:50 A.M.

  She hung up the phone and let her forehead drop into her palm.

  Please don’t ring again, she thought.

  For a few minutes, it didn’t. The office was disarmingly quiet. She sat, eyes closed, face still, for as long as she could. Beneath the desk, her feet lay limp, neatly crossed at the ankles. She was wearing her old moccasins, the camel-colored ones that were scuffed around the heels. They were suede, soft as socks, the soles peeling at the edges. She only wore them with jeans, to walk the dogs in the morning or to pick up coffee at the deli, never to the office.

  This morning, she had been too overwhelmed to change. What did it matter anyway? No one else would be in. It was Thanksgiving. The bleary-eyed security guard had seemed surprised to see her. He had reluctantly set down his coffee to turn on the bag scanner. He gave her a look that read You’re the reason I’m working on Thanksgiving. Jane gave him a brisk nod, and for a second felt her eyes prick with tears from the cold.

  Upstairs, the whole floor was dark. The printers hummed, still asleep. When she switched on the overhead fluorescents, they flickered for a few seconds, then filled the hallway with the a buzzing sound and threw off a dingy yellow light.

  Her office was just as she’d left it, stacks of papers overwhelming the plastic in-box at the left-hand corner of her desk, Post-it notes stuck haphazardly to the frame of her computer screen. Each one insisted that she do something: Call someone back, review the division budgets, buy the special dog food the vet had recommended. She couldn’t face them. She sat with her head cradled in one hand, cell phone still in the other, as though one small movement would break the silence and the office would spring back to life again. The only thing moving was her pounding, adrenalized, overcaffeinated heart.

  When the phone rang again, a small wash of relief passed th
rough her.

  The only thing worse than being in the office on Thanksgiving was being in the office with nothing to do. She was used to the tightrope walk of work. One foot in front of the other; deliberate, measured movements under stress. All she had to do was not look down. Because if she did, she would see the chasm beneath her, empty and lonely, threatening to swallow her whole. Best not to stop moving.

  “This is a helluva situation,” the voice barked when she answered.

  “Happy Thanksgiving to you, too, Ellis.” she said.

  “Give me a break, Jane. Happy Thanksgiving.”

  Ellis Stuart. Ellis was Jane’s counterpart in D.C. Technically, he was Jane’s superior, but most days, they worked side by side. The power balance between them, always tender, was more delicate now than ever. In January, a new SEC head would be named, and Jane was the frontrunner. Ellis was slated to retire. Because this made him impartial, Ellis had been tapped to advise the president-elect on the nomination.

  This was Ellis’s swan song. Ellis had spent his entire career at the SEC, law school to retirement, “cradle to grave,” as he liked to say. While he had been grandfathered into a senior position, Ellis had been, for years, discounted by his colleagues as a dinosaur. The longer he stayed, the more restless the office had become with him. The junior attorneys greeted him like day-old bread, not palatable but not quite appropriate to chuck altogether. He had never really fully grasped e-mail and sent out missives with spelling errors or in all caps. He made the occasional off-color joke. And he hadn’t run his own cases in years, which put him out of touch with the daily ins and outs of investigation and trial. At one time, Ellis had been a rising star, hungry and sharp, with the winningest record of any trial attorney at the SEC. But those days were long gone. They were remembered only dimly by the most senior attorneys, paid the same due as the playing victories of a college quarterback.

  Now in his last months, Ellis found himself with the ear of the president-elect and the ability to shape the agency’s future. Anyone with an outside chance of a promotion kowtowed to him, and the ones who didn’t acknowledged him with a dutiful respect. The change in tenor wasn’t lost on Ellis. He relished it. He talked louder, demanded answers sooner, made his presence known in meetings. He walked the halls with an infused swagger. Especially with Jane, Ellis took on a dictatorial tone. He took every opportunity to remind her that he was evaluating her, and that he would be up until the day the new chairman was announced. Nothing was certain.