After that it was simply a matter of logistics. There was no way he was going to let her leave his life again.
‘I love you,’ he said as they lay in bed in her hotel, after a second, more leisurely piece of lovemaking. ‘I was mad to let you go.’
‘Yes you were,’ said Angie. She reached across him for her champagne. ‘I read somewhere that if you dip a cock in champagne, it tastes absolutely delicious.’
‘The cock or the champagne?’
‘Not sure. Let’s try.’
‘My cock wouldn’t fit into that champagne glass,’ said Baby.
‘Bighead.’
‘No, just the cock.’
‘I bet it will.’
‘OK.’
It didn’t, to his considerable complacency; so she poured the champagne over it, and then wriggled down and started lapping it off. Baby smiled at her golden head, stroked it, felt his penis rising again.
‘Baby Praeger, you certainly haven’t lost any of your potency in these ten years,’ said Angie.
‘Oh but I have,’ he said, his eyes momentarily heavy. ‘It’s only you working your magic.’
‘Really?’ She was clearly charmed by this thought. ‘You mean you sometimes can’t? With … ?’
‘I sometimes can’t. With anyone.’
‘Baby! Does that mean other ladies? Apart from Mary Rose.’
‘I’m afraid it does,’ he said, his eyes heavy with love as he looked at her, ‘but I have to tell you that I have never been to bed with anyone, in this whole long ten years, without thinking of you.’
Angie sat up suddenly and looked at him. Her eyes were oddly bright; she brushed at them impatiently.
‘Shit,’ she said, her voice slightly shaky. ‘Shit, Baby, you mustn’t say things like that.’
He asked her about her own life; she told him there had been a couple of relationships, neither of them long-lasting, a couple of briefer ones. ‘I really haven’t been very into sex,’ she said, suddenly efficient. ‘I’ve been too busy being a tycoon.’
‘And I’m really proud of you. I think you’re wonderful. Do you live alone?’
‘Yes, in a house in St John’s Wood. It’s really pretty, I can’t wait to show it to you.’
‘A whole house to yourself ?’
‘Well, most of it. I have my grandmother in the basement.’
‘You do? Well that’s wonderful.’
‘I felt I owed her one. As they say. And she’s fun, even if she is seventy-something. Oh my goodness, Baby, that reminds me, I haven’t got around to cancelling that standing order to the rest home in Bournemouth. I’m so sorry. It’s only been two or three months, I’ll do it right away.’
‘All right, darling, no rush. Talking of rushing, I really do have to go.’
‘Where are you supposed to be?’ she said, stroking his shoulder with her finger.
‘Oh, at one of my schmoozing sessions. I have a whole host of new activities, Angie, you’d be amazed. I’ve gone into showbiz banking. My father hates it.’
‘But your father doesn’t have any say any more?’
‘He has a great deal of say,’ said Baby, laughing, ‘but that’s where it ends. Thank God.’
‘Tell me about your showbiz activities.’
‘Another time. How long are you here for? I didn’t dare ask you before.’
‘Oh,’ said Angie, ‘another week. Maybe two. I have some clients looking for property over here.’
Baby was very impressed.
Praegers, it was generally agreed, had changed more than a little since Baby Praeger’s ascension to power. There were those who thought the changes were for the better, and those who thought quite the reverse; but nobody could deny their existence. Baby had gone in for glitz: had sponsored causes and charities, donated generously to the arts, established high-profile sporting events. The Praeger Vets Baseball Team took on all comers (almost invariably losing to them) in a blaze of media attention, and attendance at Baby’s annual Celebrity Golf Game in Palm Springs was mandatory for anyone who was anyone (or indeed wanted to be).
Fred III hated the whole thing and said so; he was suspicious of it, he said, and particularly of Baby’s own high-profile role.
Baby, warmly confident in his own abilities and the clement climate of Wall Street altogether at the time, told him he didn’t understand, that it was the age of the personality, that Fred should take a look at Bruce Wasserstein, Peter Cohen, Dennis Levine. ‘You hear those names and you think smart and you think dynamic, the clients rush in.’ Fred retorted that it was dangerous, that the guys pulled in the clients all right, and then left with them; what was right was the system at Goldmans where you had to be ten years just to get to be a partner.
‘Times have changed, Dad,’ said Baby.
Baby was actually just a little concerned about the partner situation at Praegers. The senior guys were just fine: Pete Hoffman, Chris Hill, Mike Stevens, and the other seven, all rocks: experienced, strong, able, backing him to the hilt. But he was uncomfortably aware he had put in some just slightly less rock-like, less able people as junior partners over the past year: notably Chuck Drew, charming, golden friend of Jeremy Foster, brought in from the considerably lower echelons of Chase and placed on the board more to please Jeremy than to promote the greater good of Praegers, and Henry Keers, sharp, funny, ambitious, and showing promise but no more in the fast-developing M & A (Mergers and Acquisitions) department. Henry was a prime mover at the MidWeek Meeting, and he had an eye for his own superstar status; he was exactly the kind of man Fred worried about. What was really dangerous about these promotions, Baby knew, was that it weakened his defence amongst the board against men he didn’t want in. Pete Hoffman was rooting for his own son, Gabe, now a senior vice president, brilliant, hard-working and ferociously ambitious. But Baby didn’t worry overmuch about any of it; life was too much fun.
The development of the relationship with Angie proved complex. Her business was in London, and that was where she had to be. She was not playing at it, she explained to him, it was worth a lot of money, and she had to take care of it. He could see that.
After the first fortnight, while she looked (unsuccessfully for the most part, she said) for properties for her client, she went back to London. Baby missed her almost beyond endurance. It was as painful, if not more so, than the parting ten years earlier. Then he had been resolute, putting her out of his mind, determinedly ignoring the pain; now newly in love he could hardly stand it.
He made a trip to London, a forty-eight-hour stop-over; he booked in at the Savoy, and there they stayed for the entire time, never leaving the room, and hardly the bed. Once or twice he told the switchboard to say he was out, just to create the impression, to his office and to Mary Rose, should she phone more than once or twice, that he was indeed engaged on business and not confined to his suite. But the only expeditions he really made were into Angie’s apparently insatiable small person; and one brief one in her company to Harrods, to buy presents for the children. When he left she cried, and said she would come to New York when she could, but not for at least a month, she was very busy with several transactions, and there was no one else to handle them.
‘Can’t you get an assistant?’ said Baby gloomily, downing a treble brandy in the VIP departure lounge at Heathrow, and no, she said, no she certainly couldn’t, she would find herself ripped off totally, and would he consider leaving Praegers in the hands of Pete Hoffman and Chris Hill for more than a few days? Baby said he certainly would, and frequently did, when he went on business trips or vacations; and in any case he hardly thought the comparison was valid. Angie had a one-woman property business, not a billion-pound investment bank.
‘I daresay,’ said Angie, looking at him with a dangerous light in her green eyes, ‘I and my company are worth proportionately more than you and your company.’
‘Maybe,’ said Baby hastily. He realized he had absolutely no idea how to deal with professional and powerful women.
The compromise they reached would have seemed highly unsatisfactory if it hadn’t made him so happy. Once a month at least Angie flew to New York; once a month at least he went to London (or occasionally to Paris or Zurich, to allay Mary Rose’s suspicion). They were greatly aided in this by Concorde, which cut four hours off the flying time; Angie particularly enjoyed the phenomenon of leaving Heathrow at eight and arriving at JFK at exactly the same time or even a little earlier. One day just for the hell of it she flew over for lunch with Baby and back again; she had some news she wanted to share with him (a purchase of an entire row of very pretty Georgian cottages in Camberwell she had beaten two of the big boys to, by the simple process of getting the residents on her side and offering to pay their removal expenses) and lunching at the Lutèce seemed, she said, a particularly good way of celebrating. She wouldn’t even go to bed with him that day, she said it made the journey seem more extravagant if its purpose was simply lunch; Baby’s frustration was very largely alleviated by the charm of her gesture. After a while, when Angie was in New York she lived in her old apartment in the Village, which Baby had always found himself emotionally unable to sell; an agent had leased it out for him, on short-term lets, and he reclaimed it easily. It was an exceptionally nice apartment, with big light lofty rooms, just off Vincent Square, and Angie after an initial protest agreed that it was more sensible than running up huge hotel bills. In any case, as Baby pointed out, they were a lot less likely to be recognized by anyone in the Village than in the environs of the Pierre Hotel.
As a cover for early morning visits to Angie, Baby took up running. He bought track suits and trainers, got up early every day, and set off at an extremely brisk pace in the direction of Central Park. Once out of sight of the apartment he would saunter on for a while, picking up a coffee at one of the early morning delis, and if the day was nice enough, actually go into the park and sit on a bench and admire the landscape and any passing female joggers or dog walkers. This routine only varied when Angie was in town, when he hailed a cab, drove down to the Village, removed the track suit and climbed into her bed. Mary Rose, who always left the apartment by seven thirty to go to her exercise class, consequently never saw him return (to remove a clean, unsweaty track suit and to climb, quite unnecessarily, in the bathtub), but she approved very much of his new regime, having urged him for years to take some exercise. It added considerably to Baby’s pleasure, as he lay entwined in Angie’s arms, to contemplate the rather different nature of the exercise he was actually taking from what Mary Rose complacently imagined.
He was charmed and delighted by the new Angie; he had never forgotten the pleasure of her, of her beauty, her just slightly sharp charm, her sense of fun, her innate sexiness, and those qualities, rich as ever, had been heightened, sharpened by absence, by not having her. But there was something else now, something totally unexpected and every bit as important, as valuable, and that was that she was in some strange way an equal, a business partner, someone with whom he could talk problems through. She had always listened, made observations, talked sense; but now she could look at a situation from every angle, proffer suggestions, examine arguments. The hours they spent talking money, tactics, successes, dangers, came to mean as much to Baby as the hours that preceded them making love; and in some strange way he found them as exciting. Talking a deal through with Angie, describing its conception, its progress, its traumas, its conclusion, was an oddly intense pleasure.
What he did not discuss with her – until it was far far too late – was what he came to think of as the Chuck Drew affair.
It was Pete Hoffman who first alerted him to Chuck Drew’s activities; he seemed to be getting overly involved in the M & A side, Pete said, and talking too much about the deals as well. He was also very buddy-buddy with Henry Keers. ‘He moves in a circle of extremely high-profile people, Baby. I think you should have a word with him about discretion. It only takes one slip to get hoisted with insider dealing.’
Baby smiled politely and ignored the advice. He also managed to ignore the fact that Chuck appeared to be living beyond his means, and within a fairly short space of time had bought himself a Maserati, commissioned the building of a house in Florida and was having his New York apartment done out by Robert Metzger. Even Jeremy Foster remarked on it over a dinner with Baby, much of which was spent bemoaning the parlous state of his marriage, and Isabella’s threat of instituting divorce proceedings if he didn’t start, as she put it, behaving like an adult. Baby told him he should take Isabella’s advice. Jeremy said he was really, genuinely trying, that he loved Isabella more than anything in the world, and after sinking several more glasses of bourbon, returned to the subject of Chuck Drew.
‘Metzger doesn’t come cheap, I mean he charges a hundred grand just to walk in the door. And nor do Maseratis. I’m pleased for him, don’t get me wrong. But you must be paying him a fortune.’
Still only mildly concerned, Baby called the salaries division next day.
Praegers were not paying Chuck Drew a fortune; what he was getting was clearly not enough to finance Maseratis and mansions in Florida. Pete Hoffman’s words about insider trading suddenly resounded in Baby’s head.
He had a showdown with Chuck; asked him where he was getting his money from. Chuck told him, fairly pleasantly, to mind his own business, and Baby said he felt it was very much his business, that he needed to be assured that there was nothing untoward going on under Praegers’ aegis, and that if Chuck wouldn’t tell him he intended to find out anyway. He asked Chuck for details of all his financial affairs, and if he had any accounts in Zurich or the Bahamas. Chuck swore he hadn’t; he remained calm, almost complacent in the face of Baby’s agitation. Baby was baffled by his reaction and tried to reassure himself that if Chuck had genuinely been up to something, he would have been a lot more worried. A check on his credit rating and bank accounts appeared to reveal in any case that he was telling the truth. But Baby didn’t believe him. He told Chuck if he wouldn’t tell him the truth, he might be forced to call in the Securities and Exchange Commission. Chuck looked at him with the same complacent calm and said nothing.
Two days later Jeremy Foster called him; could they meet, to talk about Chuck?
Jeremy was shocked, shocked to death, he said; Chuck had admitted to him that he had been involved in insider trading, had made a fortune on several recent Praeger deals, purchasing the shares in the name of two aunts, one in Iowa, one in Wisconsin, neither of whose names most conveniently was Drew, and paying the resultant profits into their accounts. Baby, equally shocked, said he would have to report Chuck to the SEC, that Praegers’ reputation was at stake.
Jeremy looked at him. ‘Do you really mean that?’
‘Jeremy, of course I really mean it.’
‘I don’t want that, Baby.’ Jeremy’s eyes were hard, suddenly, and blank. ‘Our association, that is Fosters and Praegers, goes back a long way,’ he said. ‘It would be very sad if anything damaged our good relations.’
‘Jeremy,’ said Baby, ‘what on earth are you saying?’
‘You know what I’m saying,’ said Jeremy, and his eyes were blanker still. ‘I want Chuck kept on. As a partner. I promise you nothing untoward will ever happen again. Just wipe the slate on this one, will you, Baby, please.’
Baby looked at him. He thought of the Foster account, the billions of dollars that were involved, year on year; the way the sheer weight of their business gave Praegers a status beyond its size; he remembered his father’s words about how there was nothing, nothing you would not do for a client, an important client; and he waited for quite a long time, and then he said,‘Very well, Jeremy. But I want Chuck’s assurance that nothing of the sort will ever happen again. OK?’
‘OK,’ said Jeremy. His relief was visible; his relaxation almost tangible. ‘Thank you. Thank you very much, Baby.’ He smiled, his most winning smile; he had changed again, into the old Jeremy, no longer stern, no longer hostile. ‘Can I buy you lunch?’
‘
No thank you,’ said Baby, slightly distantly.
It was Isabella who explained it all to him, many months later. She didn’t know what she was explaining, but Baby found her crying, very drunk, in one of the bathrooms at a party they were all at.
‘Hey,’ he said, ‘it’s not so bad is it? I thought you and Jeremy were all right again.’
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘oh, Baby, I don’t know. I keep forgiving him, and then I learn some other awful thing. The latest is some black tart, and I do mean tart, he’s seeing all the time.’
‘Poor Isabella. Can’t you poison her tea or something?’
‘Baby! If only it was her tea. The tart is male. I can’t stand it. It is total humiliation. I thought it was all over, that – that particular little behaviour pattern. Ever since he had that thing with Chuck, I –’
She stared at him, her tears abruptly stopped, her eyes wide with terror. ‘Oh God, Baby, oh shit, I never said that, I forgot Chuck worked for you, please please forget it, forget I said …’
‘Of course I will,’ said Baby, patting her hand absent-mindedly. ‘Of course I will. Don’t worry, Isabella, I’m a great keeper of secrets. Here, take my hanky, and let me get you a drink.’
He went out to the bar to find her a drink. His mind was whirling, and he felt rather sick.
He had been feeling particularly good the day of the heart attack. He and Angie had had a very good few days: Mary Rose and the children safely in Nantucket, most of New York away. He had been sleeping at home, in case Mary Rose phoned, and getting up as early as three or four, putting on his running clothes, and going down to the Village and Angie; Nancy the maid, who was a sound sleeper, only knew when he came home again, and had several times told Mary Rose that Mr Praeger was out running, and had more than once added that in the dreadful heat of a New York August, she thought it was a little unwise.
Wicked Pleasures Page 31
