Prejudice & Pride

by Lynn Messina

  That the scheme was Georgia’s Bennet doesn’t doubt. Of course he’s haunted by the glimmer of awe in Lydon’s eyes as he examined the department’s budget reports, and intellectually, he knows it’s possible: A boy who lies easily to his parents would not scruple to rob his employer. But the grandness of the plot, the decision to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars, exonerates him from the worse crime. As Meryton likes to lament about the other two Bethle boys, Lydon lacks vision. He would pocket spare change from the petty cash box without a second thought, but it would never occur to him to take the till.

  Following Darcy’s advice, though of course he or John would have thought of it soon enough, they hire a lawyer to represent Lydon, and this capable woman immediately gathers more information than they. It’s she who discovers Lydon has been transported from a holding cell at a police station to the FBI’s London headquarters. With Eleanor Kramer on the case, Bennet and John know there’s no point in their showing up at Federal Plaza every morning to wait for news, and yet they can’t seem to help themselves. Being near the source is better than being cooped up in their small apartments or, worse, trying to go about their business as if everything is normal.

  Anyway, they don’t have business to go about. What are they going to do while their brother is being extradited for grand theft larceny? Job hunt?

  Well, actually, they do need to job hunt because excellent lawyers don’t come cheap. The considerable retainer has seriously strained their bank accounts, and they refuse to apply to their parents for help. They consider Lydon’s fall into criminality and disgrace to be their fault. It happened on their watch, and they did nothing to warn him of Georgia’s depravity. Only double-teamed fast-talking has managed to convince the elder Bethles to remain in Michigan. Why hop a plane to wait in the FBI office for hours on end?

  Although most of their days are given over to pacing and glaring angrily in the general direction of Special Agent Tompkins’s office, Bennet always devotes an hour or two every morning to scouring the Web for any new and infuriating gossip.

  “I don’t know why you do that,” John says as crushes an empty coffee cup and tosses it into the trash. In a moment, he will make another run. Caffeine and nerves seem to be the only things sustaining him. “You’re just going to make yourself angry.”

  Bennet shrugs. “I’m already angry.”

  “Angrier, then.”

  “Impossible,” he says, clicking on a Gawker item and reading.

  John watches him silently for a few minutes, then says, “These reporters don’t know what they’re talking about.”

  “Really? This one calls Lydon ‘a charming wastrel who’s never done an honest day’s work in his life,’ so he knows something,” he says.

  His brother walks to the other end of the drab waiting room and looks out the window at the passing traffic.

  “He also calls you a gifted fundraiser,” Bennet adds, “so he’s got good sources. I wonder who at the Longbourn is talking to him. Actually, it’s probably more useful to wonder who’s not. Oh—now he goes on to imply that you’re the mastermind behind the plot, as it’s impossible for a low-level drudge like Lydon to have access to such privileged information. Little does he know Meryton keeps a Post-it stuck to his computer with all his passwords.”

  “Is there a quote from Jackson?” John asks, despite himself. He doesn’t want to care what the press are saying, and yet it’s impossible not to obsess about the stories being told about him and his family. Information about Georgia has come out, too, with colleagues who seemed to be her good friends describing her as irresponsible, unreliable and vindictive. Apparently, she borrowed from her fellow designers all the time to pay for clubs, cabs and drinks—debts she failed to settle by dipping into her illegally acquired largesse, a move that turned out to be far from deft.

  Bennet smiles without humor. “Of course. What would an article about the great Longbourn scandal be without a quote from Henry’s oldest grandson? ‘You have to ask yourself, why would three brothers work in the same department at the same institution? The answer is very clear: for total infiltration. But that’s beside the point now. This scandal proves what I and my family have been saying for years—Cyrus Longbourn’s dream has become untenable in the modern age.’”

  John sighs, saddened that Lydon’s thoughtlessness—or, as Bennet would say, his fucking stupidity—hasn’t just brought down the Bethle family but the 100-year-old institution as well. “At least he didn’t call for proposals from real estate developers like he did in yesterday’s Times.”

  As dire as the situation is, Bennet has just enough humor left to appreciate Jackson Longbourn’s audacity. Delivered the opportunity of a lifetime, he’s wasting no time in capitalizing on it. He wouldn’t be surprised if this time next year Longbourn Estates broke ground in Forest Hills.

  “Here’s another juicy passage,” Bennet says with bitter relish. “‘Bennet Bethle, the second oldest of the so-called Bethle Gang, is reputed to be a communist, having recently been overheard at a fundraiser extolling the virtues of good design for the masses. Some industry insiders wonder if it’s this desire to redistribute wealth that led him to allegedly participate in such a nefarious crime.’ I don’t mind being called a communist, but it really bugs me that the reporter didn’t call out the Bauhaus exhibition by name. This article has gotten a lot of page views. The show could use the publicity.”

  John’s only response is to announce another Starbucks run and to take requests. Bennet absently shakes his head, and Ida, the pretty redheaded receptionist whose good opinion John has been cultivating all week, asks for a soy latte. So far, this cultivation has yielded few benefits, but this morning, their seventh in a row, she greeted them with a smile and actually said hello. Perhaps soon she’d feed them information.

  Despite the severity of the situation, John’s essential faith in the goodness of humanity remains intact, though much tattered. Like Bennet, he blames Georgia—she must be the villain—and yet part of him rebels at the idea of total condemnation. There has to be some undiscovered piece of information that would mitigate the crime. Even with all the evidence, he persists in wondering if all this—the beige FBI waiting room, the Gawker articles, the caffeine—might still be a misunderstanding.

  “Hurry back,” Bennet says as his brother presses the elevator button. “I’ve got Buzzfeed’s listicle on the fourteen best museum heists burning a hole in my browser.”

  As soon as John is gone, Bennet throws the phone onto the chair cushion in disgust and walks across the room with nervous energy. It’s as if one of the Bethle brothers must always be pacing in unrestrained agitation at any given moment. While he takes his turn striding uselessly from the window to the elevator bank and back again, his thoughts drift to Darcy. His thoughts have drifted to her often during this seemingly endless vigil, and he can’t help but feel that the pressure weighing on his chest, a heavy dread that never leaves him, would be a little less oppressive had he never met her. It would have spared him, he thinks, at least one or two sleepless nights.

  When John returns, he drinks his coffee and talks to Ida first about the road work out front, which seems entrenched, and then about her career in the FBI. It’s interesting enough and Bennet listens to bits and pieces of it as he passes. Eventually, he goes for a coffee run himself, and John takes up the relentless pacing of the floor.

  And so the day passes, just like every other day they’ve spent there, until 4:47 p.m., when Special Agent Tompkins emerges from behind the glass doors to the left of Ida’s desk and asks to speak with them in his office. His office—the inner sanctum! Bennet feels relief and dread and excited anticipation that the next moment won’t be exactly the same as the last and the one before that.

  Special Agent David Tompkins’s office is at once sparse and messy. His walls have no art except for a poster of the Leaning Tower of Pisa with the words Don’t fall along the bottom. Every surface, however, is covered with folders, books, magazines a
nd printouts. Following his lead, John and Bennet sit down on the other side of a dark brown desk, and though the chairs are comfortable, they begin to fidget. It’s hard for both of them to be seated at the same time.

  “I’m pleased to report that the charges against Lydon Bethle have been dropped,” Tompkins says.

  Neither brother responds immediately. They stare at the agent from the FBI and wonder if he’s suddenly talking in tongues.

  Bennet tries first. “Some of the charges?”

  “No,” Tompkins says. “All of the charges.”

  John leans forward. “But there will be new charges?”

  Tompkins shakes his head. “There will be no new charges. Your brother has been cleared of all wrongdoing.”

  The agent’s words couldn’t have been any clearer, and yet Bennet and John can’t understand how Lydon has come through such an infamous episode unscathed. Is this a delusion brought on by anxiety and boredom? Bennet surreptitiously pinches himself on the wrist and feels the sting. Not a delusion, then.

  But Tompkins’s next statement, perhaps the most absurdly implausible one ever made on the planet Earth, even more so than the moon landing was faked, convinces him he must in fact be in the middle of a dream. “The United States government is very grateful to Mr. Bethle for his assistance in catching a clever and dangerous criminal.”

  Bennet can’t form words. He’s simply incapable of putting together a coherent thought. As baffled as he is, John manages to say, “It is?”

  Tompkins nods. “For the past five weeks, your brother’s been part of a covert operation to entrap Ms. Wickham, who we’ve suspected of various financial crimes for some time. With Mr. Bethle’s help, we have enough evidence to put her away for a very long time.”

  Both brothers know this is impossible, but John knows it a little less resolutely than Bennet, and as Tompkins relates some particulars of the operation, he gloms onto the details that sound the most likely. Lydon is secretive, prone to intrigue and loves a good lark.

  “The money’s been restored to the Longbourn, with the FBI’s apologies for any inconvenience suffered,” Tompkins says. “Mr. Bethle will be free to go as soon as we put the paperwork through. Your lawyer has been alerted and is already working on it. The process should take only a day at the most, and then he’ll be transported back to the States. The FBI thanks you for your patience.”

  “All the money?” Bennet asks suspiciously, as he struggles to process what Tompkins is saying. He knows something is missing from the equation, for his brother, though certainly not evil, is definitely not heroic.

  “Every cent,” the agent says.

  Bennet can’t conceive how this is possible. Last-minute tickets to London aren’t free, and two villains clever enough to hack into private accounts wouldn’t have made the rookie mistake of charging the flight to their credit cards.

  John stands up. Everything has been resolved in the best way possible, and he sees no reason to nitpick over how many pennies were recovered. Bennet, he knows, is inclined to stay and go over the accounting until the math makes sense. The thing his brother doesn’t understand is that nothing about this episode will ever make total sense. It will defy sense until the day all three of them die, hopefully as free citizens and not guests of the United States government.

  “We’ll get out of your way and let you get back to work,” John says, holding out his hand. “We appreciate the time and effort you’ve put into this.”

  Bennet stands up, as well, and thanks Tompkins for his time and shakes his hand and follows John into the waiting area, where Ida is pleased for them. After seven days and thirteen lattes, she’s invested in their drama and genuinely relieved at its outcome. Bennet presses the button for the elevator while John jots down his email for Ida. He’s relieved, too, by the outcome of their drama—of course he is!—but he doesn’t have his brother’s willful sanguinity. Happy resolution or not, the damage has been done. Their lives won’t simply pick up where they left off as if the incident were merely a technical glitch. They’ll never recover what’s been lost. He’s thinking of his job, his standing, his reputation, yes, but also of Darcy. He wishes now that he hadn’t, in the extreme agitation of the moment, told her about his brother’s crime, because his own ready acceptance of it gives the original story more credence. He provided just enough information to make her leery of any version that shows Lydon to advantage and reveal the outrageousness of his heroics as the sordid lie it is.

  And that’s it in a nutshell, Bennet thinks as he waits for the elevator. The whole affair is just a little too sordid, even with the whitewashing that’s sure to come in Gawker, Buzzfeed, et al, and he can’t imagine Darcy, who somehow overcame her scruples once, would be able to do so again with this further provocation. Her estimation of his family and his own upbringing, education and profession might be outdated, but it aligns with the values of the rarefied world she lives in. Carl Bingston’s scorn and Lady Catherine’s condemnation are not trifles to be so easily dismissed, not for someone for whom breeding and pedigree still matter.

  A relationship between them would have been nothing more than a grand experiment designed to fail, and yet he feels the ineffable sadness of so much opportunity lost. It turns out Darcy’s temperament, her intelligence and humor—so opposite of his own—would have suited him perfectly, and if she’d taught him to take life a little more seriously, he would most certainly have taught her how to take it a little less.

  What a triumph for her, he thinks without humor. What only two months ago he’d proudly spurned, he now finds himself ardently desiring.

  The elevator finally arrives, and as he and John step into the car, they establish the course of action for their immediate future: find a bar, get a drink and call their parents. But shortly, while Bennet imagines downing three glasses of scotch in as many minutes, John suggests they reverse the order and call their folks first.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The negotiations begin at once. As soon as the FBI issues a release clearing Lydon of all wrongdoing and detailing his assistance in apprehending a notorious criminal, Meryton asks Bennet and John to come back. But even John, whose mortification is not nearly as acute as his brother’s, feels there’s something untoward about returning to an institution that had summarily fired him little more than a week before. Never one to accept a polite refusal, Meryton immediately sweetens the deal by offering an additional week of vacation and an extra ten percent discount at the Longbourn gift shop. When they decline that as well, he ups the ante with yet more vacation time—provided it’s taken at Christmas—and twenty percent off at the in-house café during the nonpeak hours of 10 to 11 and 3:30 to 5:30. Now John weakens, not because the lure of cheap coffee is too much to resist but because Meryton wants them back so badly he’s managed to finagle a discount long-denied to the Longbourn staff. Many managers have tried to wheedle special dispensation for their employees; all have failed.

  Although Bennet is equally cognizant of the compliment Meryton has paid them with the café discount, the humiliation of being fired in the lobby, of not being trusted enough to enter his own office, is too intense and he declines. He encourages John, however, to return without him, but his brother refuses to consider it.

  Meryton’s next gambit is a five percent pay raise, an earnest apology for mishandling the situation and unrestricted access to office supplies, including Post-its and highlighters. Bennet, as moved by the extravagance of Meryton’s generosity as he is the sincerity of his apology, calls up his former boss and painstakingly explains why he simply doesn’t feel comfortable returning. It is, he believes, a good, clear, precise explanation, one that Meryton purports to not only understand but respect, and yet ten minutes later he calls back to throw in three free mugs and Arbor Day off.

  Sighing, Bennet launches into another detailed explanation, using different words to say the same thing, but Meryton sighs even more loudly and begs him not to make him beg.

  “You must con
sider this from my perspective,” Meryton says. “I made the best decision I could based on the information I had. I hear what you’re saying about the lobby. I understand you feel a particular humiliation in not being let up to your office to clear out your desk, but think about what I did give you: enough trust to let you into the building. I could’ve dispensed with your services on the walk in front of the museum, which, for the record, the employee handbook explicitly states is standard operating procedure in the case of a federal investigation, but I decided that was a little too shabby for someone who has worked with me for so many years. See? I did treat you with respect. Furthermore, I didn’t hover over you in the lobby. I gave you space to process your emotions and didn’t worry for above a few seconds—fifteen, really, at the most—that you might try to steal hundreds of dollars from the registers.”

  Here Bennet is compelled to point out that very little cash is kept at the admissions desk because most visitors use their credit card, and although Meryton finds it curious that Bennet has thought about how much money the admissions desk has at any given moment, he doesn’t remark on it. Instead, he says, “These points must count in my favor, as well as the fact that I’ve been a kind and generous employer for almost a decade.”

  Bennet considers this statement, which is true but cuts both ways—he’s been an honest, reliable and nonthieving employee for almost a decade—and finds himself growing angry again.

  Sensing the direction of Bennet’s thoughts, Meryton digs deeper. “I gave you a job when nobody else would. I took a chance on an untried kid.”

  Amused by the blatant revision of history, Bennet laughs, and hearing it, Meryton makes a squeaky gargling sound before his tone takes on a strong wheedling inflection. “You must come back. You and John. You simply must return to your former jobs. Your refusal puts the Longbourn in an untenable position. Yes, we had to move swiftly to ensure the security of our donors’ money, but that was when Lydon was a thief and a villain. Now that he’s a hero, our dismissal appears harsh, rash and needlessly severe. Gothamist called our response draconian—they’re questioning the morality of an institution that holds an entire family responsible for the actions of a single member. We can’t have the media questioning the morality of our institution. We’ve been the backbone of this neighborhood for generations. Please,” he says, sounding almost on the verge of tears. “Please. I promised Henry that you and John would be happy to come back. Please, please, please don’t make me disappoint that kindly old man.”