Gerzon looked at Rainey. "I said get a lawyer, not a junkyard dog."
"It's okay—" Jay began.
"We're covering all the fees, we're being totally accommodating," said Gerzon.
I didn't like him and I didn't like the situation but I pulled the chain on the small lamp on the table and slid the contract beneath it, trying to get a better sense of the deal. Jay was acquiring a six-story loft building in lower Manhattan at 162 Reade Street, not far from City Hall, where the streets run according to the obsolete logic of cow paths and farmers' lanes. When the World Trade Center went down, real estate values in the area got strange. Some people panicked over more terrorism or contamination by the chemical soup that wafted from the burning site and sold for nothing, while others stood firm. If I'd had even a day's notice, I'd have checked the city records downtown to see how long Gerzon's client had owned the property, what the cost-basis was. The building was being exchanged by one Voodoo LLC, a limited-liability company, for ownership of eighty-six acres of real estate on the North Fork of Long Island. Survey documents of the land parcel were attached to the proposed contract and showed a deep strip of land running almost half a mile along Long Island Sound.
I looked up at Gerzon. "You're dumping a marginal downtown property with unprofitable long-term leases and possibly contaminated by the World Trade Center disaster for a huge piece of oceanfront acreage," I told him. "My client is short on cash to cover his closing costs and you've squeezed him way down on the price as a result. You're coughing up four hundred thousand dollars, which is nothing, nothing at all!" I turned to Jay. "You understand that once you sign this contract—"
"Let's do the deal, Mr. Wyeth," growled Gerzon. "Let's do the damn deal and go home."
The waiter drifted past, nearly mistakable as a configuration of cigar smoke. Allison signaled him. "Guys," she announced nervously, "anyone want a late dinner, drink, dessert before we begin?"
Barrett laid his pink hands on the table and ordered the largest steak the place sold.
"Mr. Gerzon?"
"Nothing for me."
"Bill?"
"I'll have some of that chocolate cake."
Allison nodded at the waiter to induce action and then glanced at me, her face tense behind her smile. Something about Jay unnerved her, I thought, even though his big hand had already smoothed its way up the small of her back.
"Get me one of those cigars," he said to her, and when she did he inspected it for a moment, ran it under his nose, nodded his satisfaction, and slipped it into the breast pocket of his suit.
"Okay," I told everyone. "I'm going to insist I have a chance to look at the contract privately. Just get me a quiet room where I can read this for"— I checked my watch—"the next twenty-nine minutes."
"Great," said Jay. "Then we—"
"Twenty-four minutes," coughed out Barrett. "I need five minutes for myself, start to end, no more, but no less."
"Twenty-four, then."
Gerzon pulled more papers from his briefcase. "We also have the transfer and tax forms, all the Suffolk County forms, too. That takes five minutes, too."
Jay was nervous. "Can we really do this in nineteen minutes? I could just—"
"No," I said. "Don't sign anything while I'm gone."
Allison led me back up the stairs, through the dining room and kitchen, then down a hallway lined with sacks of onions and potatoes. "That's the only way out of the Havana Room?" I asked.
"Yes," she called over her shoulder. "Now, the night-shift bookkeeper is in my office so I can't put you there, the adding machine drives everyone nuts." I watched the curve of muscle in each of her calves as we climbed a back stairway. What had Lipper said? She's got some moves on her most men never heard of. We passed waiters and a tray of canapés and three flights up she opened a small windowless door. "This is the quietest spot we have."
It was the restaurant's laundry room, which I hadn't seen on my earlier tour. Inside, a woman bent over an ancient Singer sewing machine, tapping rhythmically at the electric foot pedal as she fed torn fabric under its jabbing needle, while behind her, in three industrial-size washing machines, cotton tablecloths and napkins and chef's aprons tumbled in a bleachy storm.
"Mrs. Cordelli, we need the room for a little while," Allison said. The woman stood and left. Allison cleared off a small wooden table. "I'm going to knock on the door in fifteen minutes."
I set myself to the pages and soon, my attention sharpened by the room's strong smell of bleach, I had the sense of the contract. It was a perfectly legal funhouse of riders, amendments, powers of attorney, and escrow arrangements. It had passages of vagueness and extreme paranoia. To the best of my understanding, Jay Rainey had made various representations, "subject to the buyer's inspection," the deadline for which had passed, that the land being exchanged was indeed subdividable, free of buried gasoline tanks, had received Department of Health approval for multiple large-scale septic systems, had well water that contained acceptably low levels of perchlorate, a residue from chemical fertilizers used for years by Long Island's potato farmers, did not overlap with any Native American burial grounds, was not the nesting area of the spotted salamander, or any other endangered, threatened, or rare species, and carried various covenants and restrictions pertaining to federally protected marshland, drainage easements, minimum building setbacks, clustered housing arrangements, and so on. The bigger the piece of land, generally, the more complicated its transfer. The buyer, Voodoo LLC, for its part, as represented by Gerzon, had checked off on all of these conditions, not changing any of them. Which was strange— usually in a large real estate transaction there's a last-minute struggle over a number of residual issues as the two parties try to gain some final advantage before everything is signed.
It appeared, moreover, that Voodoo LLC, so eager to dump the Reade Street property, did not particularly care to inspect the nature of the ownership of the Long Island property. I saw no disclosure form regarding debts, liens, or judgments. Plus, in receiving the Reade Street property, Jay was requiring no improvements, consideration of certain conditions, or contingencies for conditions hereinafter discovered. And Gerzon had slipped in some slick language that prohibited Jay from seeking "any claim or reversal of indemnity" of Voodoo should problems arise.
That no bank was directly involved, financing the actual transaction, was unusual, too. Companies usually like to leverage real estate transactions, conserving precious cash where possible. Then again, the transaction was a swap, which might have positive tax consequences… clearly, I needed more time. In the old days, a contract like the one in front of me would have required several days of analysis. That no mortgage was being paid off or created might be a bad thing, too. Banks, for all of their excesses, act as a corrective to some of the most foolish or illegal practices, for they usually employ independent inspectors to examine the property proposed for mortgage. Not the case here. As contracts went, this was a one-night stand, and I bet that the reason Jay didn't have a lawyer was that no decent lawyer would be party to such a transaction without insisting that the contract be rewritten from top to bottom. Probably both parties were legally vulnerable. One of them was making a killing and I didn't know which.
The door eased open and there was Allison.
"All set?" she asked brightly.
"I can't be party to this."
"Why?"
"It's a mess."
"Please, Bill."
"I'm trying to protect him, Allison."
"He knows the risks, I think."
"I doubt that."
"It means a lot to him, Bill."
"That's great, Allison. I just met the guy."
"It means a lot to me."
I flipped over the contract. "Someone's getting screwed here, and I'm going to tell him that, Allison."
Less than a minute later we had returned to the Havana Room.
Jay checked his watch. "It's tight."
An enormous steaming steak was waiting at my
place, which I had not ordered, as well as the cake, which I had, and Barrett already had butter on his tie. Jay, I could see, had tossed back a drink or two while I'd been gone.
"Okay?" he asked. "Do we have liftoff?"
"I think we should talk a moment, Jay."
Gerzon pointed to his oversized watch. "Damn it, I've got eleven fifty-three. I'm not turning my watch back, either."
I leaned into Jay's ear. "I'm assuming that you'll sign this thing no matter how rotten it is, no matter my advice to the contrary."
His eyes met mine, and he nodded subtly.
"You're close to desperate."
Again a silent yes.
"You realize," I went on, "that Gerzon is bluffing, either on the deadline or the price, and probably has authority to negotiate one of them."
Jay shook his head no.
"I'm going to show you, okay?" I looked Gerzon in the eye and guessed price. "My client is not going to sign this document until you come up with another three hundred thousand dollars."
Gerzon's face creased backward, like he had suddenly stepped into a wind-tunnel. "What?"
"Yes, we'll scratch out the four hundred thousand dollars and write in seven hundred thousand dollars. Initial every figure. No big deal."
"You're fucking crazy!"
"It's done all the time. Just ask Donald Trump."
"You ask him."
"I don't need to, I've seen him do it."
"You're out of your—"
"Barrett, you ever see initialed sums?" I interrupted, feeling good now.
"Yeah, sure."
Jay turned to me. "Bill, the thing is—"
I put my hand on his arm. "Say nothing, pal. Let your lawyer handle it."
Allison watched this exchange, eyes large.
"What's it going to be, Gerzon?"
He already had his cell phone out. He stood up, his face a bitter knot, and stalked out of the room.
"I'm going to lose the deal!" Jay complained, furious now. "I can't believe it!"
"Well, maybe—" Allison began.
Jay confronted me in disbelief. "Bill, I'm going to fucking lose the deal!"
"I don't think so."
We sat a moment, the title man shoveling cake into his mouth.
"He's coming back!"
Gerzon returned, closing his cell phone. "One-fifty," he announced, sitting down again. "That's all I can do."
I'd guessed correctly. "Three hundred."
"Two."
"Two seventy-five," I said. "We won't require a bank check."
"Two twenty-five."
"Two-seventy."
"Come on!"
"Two-seventy," I repeated.
"Two-fucking-fifty."
I didn't answer.
"I said two-fifty."
I turned to Jay. "Did you know that in the second half of the twentieth century prime waterfront property on Long Island returned close to a six thousand percent profit?"
"No."
"You could sit on this property another five years and double your money easily."
"Well—"
"I said two-fifty!" screamed Gerzon.
I leaned toward him and spoke softly. "Two-seventy."
"Two fifty-five, final."
I watched the second hand on my watch tick away ten seconds. "Two-seventy."
"Two-sixty, final."
"Two sixty-five, final," I replied.
"Two sixty-five. Done."
"All right," I said. "Shake my hand."
"You fuck," said Gerzon.
"I know you hate me. Shake it anyway."
He did. I turned to Jay. "You're getting an additional two hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars cash for this property."
He nodded, stunned.
"Wow," breathed Allison. "That was kind of—" She just stared at me. Sexy, I think she might have said, but didn't.
"You'll take cash, I assume," said Gerzon, lifting his second briefcase to the table.
"Cash-cash? Bills?" asked Jay.
"Yes."
"I guess so. Why?"
"This was my instruction." Gerzon was keeping his briefcase open, hiding its total contents. I probably could have asked for more. He counted stacks of bank-banded bills. Ten thousand a stack. "You'll sign a receipt for it."
"Laundering anything, Gerzon?" I said.
"Screw you," he muttered, peeling off the last five thousand. "This is clean. It's real."
Jay turned to Allison. "Do you have a bag or something?"
"Sure. I guess." She retreated behind the bar.
"That's it," said Gerzon. "You can count it."
"I will," I said, and I did, stack by stack. It was correct. Allison returned with a cardboard box that originally held seltzer water. I stacked the cash in it.
"I can sign now?" asked Jay.
I amended the contracts. "Yes."
Then the paperwork began. We had four minutes. "I've got the bank check for the four hundred—" narrated Gerzon, moving the forms around quickly. "Mr. Barrett has his check, thank you… I can sign this… the title report, your copy… you sign here, the receipt for the blood your lawyer took out of my client's arm… And here's the deed, yes, the state transfer form…"
In a minute or so we had completed all the documents. Gerzon neatened his stack of papers, withdrew a date stamp from his briefcase, checked the day, adjusted the hour and minute, and stamped each sheet, bang, bang, bang. "And… that's it, done."
Jay coughed lightly, the box of cash by his side. "Eleven fifty-nine… and midnight, gentlemen."
"Bye guys." Barrett stood to leave. "The deed will be recorded tomorrow downtown."
Gerzon pulled a chain of keys from his pocket and dropped it on the table. "All yours," he said to Jay, not looking at me.
Jay picked up the keys with an odd caution. But then he pulled a single key from his own pocket and gave it to Gerzon. "This is for the lock on the chain at the end of the dirt road."
And that was it— the moment, the consummation. Did each man think he had swindled the other? Gerzon shook hands with Jay and, surprisingly, again with me as well, his grip a painful warning. And then his eyes slid away from each of us, and he left.
Allison made her way back over the tiled floor with a bottle and three glasses. She gave Jay a kiss and searched his eyes for gladness. "It's exciting!" she cried, and I understood that she was only passingly referring to the property deal and the miraculous appearance of a box of money. Jay smiled at her, but when they embraced, her head and breasts lost within his large chest and arms, his eyes looked away, as if through the very walls of the building, and with no discernible excitement or satisfaction, more like sadness, the resolution of someone burdened with a long and complicated journey toward a destination known only to him. I was not supposed to see this on Jay's face, but I did.
"Let's all go out and celebrate." Jay's mood seemed to lift. "I know a little place. I've got to find a way to thank you, Bill."
He was being kind and I waved them off.
"We'll work out some payment tomorrow, okay?"
"Sure," I said. "You two go on. It's all terrific. I enjoyed myself a great deal. Hang on to that box. Congratulations, Jay. You and the rest of the crooks own a piece of the island of Manhattan."
"You want to see it?" he said, his voice energetic now. "I'll be down there tomorrow morning." Then he caught up his coat and nodded to the waiter with a flashing smile and looked down into Allison's face. Her head hung back, neck exposed, eyes dreaming. She was ready for him and didn't mind if anyone knew it. They were desperate, I would see, in their own ways, but desperate people have a way of matching frequencies and finding each other before the end comes. For now something magical had happened, and the Havana Room seemed to whirlpool in a density of money and smoke and lamplight. I watched them go, Allison leaning heavily against Jay, the box under his arm, cigar in his pocket. Despite myself, my affection for Allison, I liked him. Sometimes you just like people right away. This, on the fa
ce of it, was another reason that things went further. It was the explanation I'd have offered myself or anyone else. But the truth is more complicated; somehow I sensed a steep angle to Jay's trajectory, if not its direction up or down, then an absolute velocity toward an outcome I wanted to witness. This is the same loaded attraction that creates politicians and football coaches and movie directors. Their believers believe. You don't just like the person, you want to find out something about him, something terribly important and true— you want to see if he wins or loses, lives or dies.
The Havana Room Page 10
