Francis is leaning back in his chair, eyes half closed, smoke from his cigarillo snaking its way toward the ceiling. He’s looking like any romantic, tragic hero in any existential novel. Lean, famished, disillusioned, cynical. And yet there is a glimmer of hope, a trace of love in those steel-gray eyes.
“Of course,” he answers. “Of course, I am trying to make sense.” He’s wondering whether he should tell Dhammakarati his story and thereby break his cardinal rule about never letting anybody in his employ into his private life. But he needs to talk. He needs somebody to understand. He can’t bear not having Jo around to at least mirror his loneliness and disillusionment. He needs her.
“Will you disregard at least one of your vows and share a drink with me?” He looks at Dhammakarati in a sardonically challenging way. But Dhammakarati, wise about the world and human frailty, realizes that this is not a challenge, but a deep desire to connect, to create a bond between them. He senses Francis is about to open up and that it might benefit not only Francis, but all of them if he opens his heart, even if Francis reveals just a fraction of his many secrets, and to a monk, who is bound by secrecy anyway. A monk, who is just about to disobey one of his vows.
“Thank you; I’ll be honored,” he answers neutrally.
Francis leaves the room for a short while, returning with a decanter and two heavy crystal glasses. Pouring them each a large whiskey, he settles back in his chair, thinking about where to begin. He trusts Dhammakarati with his life. But strangely enough, he also needs the approval of this peaceful but deadly monk. He feels an unfamiliar need to make himself understood on an emotional level.
After a silence during which the two men sip their drinks, Francis lances into his story.
“My family is blessed. And cursed. For many generations, we have been wealthy and influential. And we have had an unreasonably high share of tragic fates. In a way, it is as if we have had much more of everything than most ordinary people. For better and worse.” He hesitates. “Mainly for worse, I think.”
“My grandfather on my father’s side was a libertine, a rake, a Don Juan. He was a gorgeous man. Dark skinned, lots of black hair, a cocky black mustache, and, rather surprisingly, bright blue eyes. He looked like a man born of the soil but raised in the drawing rooms. He had a powerful sexuality, disguised by a thin layer of civil urbanity. Women swooned at his feet. He was an unbelievably aggressive man. However, his aggression only came out as anger and hatred when he was crossed. In good times, he exorcised his demons by drink, sex, and gambling. My best guess is that he was an illegitimate child himself. There was just too much brute force and energy in the man to link him fully to a lineage, which, by then had almost degenerated and turned into pale beings with only their good manners to guide them. At any rate, he injected the family with some much-needed vigor.
“By the time the Second World War approached, he was in his late thirties and had fathered an unknown number of children, although none legitimate. And had very nearly squandered all of the family fortune, except for a couple of properties in the country. Somehow, the war made him realize the wastefulness of his way of living. Within a few short years in the early forties, he not only married my grandmother and started a family, but also jumped into bed with the Nazis and very soon turned his financial luck around. We will probably never know exactly how much damage he did to his country or just how opportunely he acted, but by the end of the war, my grandfather had not only reclaimed the financial position he was born to but had propagated the family’s interests across Europe and hence made our position even stronger than before.
“The woman he married, my grandmother, was his exact opposite. She was a pale beauty, translucent skin, tiny, hardly bigger than a child, brainy as hell. She was mind. He was matter. Needless to say, they didn’t get on well beyond the initial infatuation. He soon returned to his former ways with women, and she dedicated herself to raising my father, the only product of her loins; his birth was probably the last time any man came near her.
“By the time I was born, they had lived apart for years. My grandfather lived in the city, taking care of business; my grandmother lived in one of our country estates, as far as possible from the offensive crudeness of his world. I dare say they each found a kind of happiness. Or at least contentment. However, raising my father was all she really had, so she smothered him with the kind of spiritual, otherworldly love that can only foster weakness in mind and body.” He checks himself. “No offense, Dhamma!”
Dhammakarati dismisses it with a wave of his hand.
“Anyway, my father was a sickly child and a feeble adult. He did nothing much, except build a very impressive library and quite literally read the entire body of international classics. The only image I have of him, actually, is sitting in a chair, glasses at the tip of his nose, absorbed in his reading. I never understood how he managed to win my mother.
“My mother, on the other hand, was a natural force of energy contained in a magnificent beauty. She was never still. She seemed to be driven by an inner, frenzied necessity. Constantly active in this movement or the other the subject didn’t seem to matter much, as long as she could dispense with some of that excess energy, which, in the end, killed her. It was in the cards, I guess, that my father could not satisfy this force of a woman, and my grandfather gallantly stepped in. I hope she found some kind of happiness with him.” Francis falls silent.
After a while, Dhammakarati gently asks, “What happened to your mother, Francis?”
“Ah, well, she drove off a cliff in the end. What else could she do? I was seven. And my father was a mess, so I was sent to stay with my grandfather. Today, I am rather grateful for that. At least he brought some masculine values into my life and showed me how to harness the kind of energy I quite obviously have inherited from my mother.”
Francis gets up and walks slowly to the bay window. “My father passed away ten years ago. Nobody really noticed.” He leans against the wall, looking into the night, lost in a past almost too painful to recall.
“And believe me when I tell you that when we enter the further recesses of the dynasty, it gets much worse. I have cousins sitting on almost-deserted islands, where they eventually will rot because someone made a deal on their behalf and got them out of long prison sentences. I have other cousins who now live under assumed names because they chose to live out their infantile fantasies of incest. They have children now, I hear. My sister is…” and here Francis finally seems to lose his composure. “My sister is locked up in a country house in northern England. Looked after by an old couple. She no longer recognizes anybody, but I want to believe she’s in no greater pain than everybody else.”
Dhammakarati, sensing this is a painful topic, interjects, “When did you last see her, Francis?”
Francis draws a hand across his eyes. “Oh, I see her every month. And have done so for twenty years now. I toyed with ending her misery but realized it was my own misery I desired to end. Not hers.” He faces Dhammakarati, his face distorted by grief. “You should have seen her as a child and young girl. She was exquisite. She has inherited my grandmother’s otherworldliness and my mother’s beauty. There was absolutely nothing of my grandfather or my father in her. She was like an angel. Blonde, delicate, delightful.
“She retreated into her own world years and years ago. And she will never come back. She wasn’t meant for this world. For its crudeness, brutality, vulgarity. She’s love incarnated. Pure spirit. Living senseless and semiconscious in an old, isolated country house with two old people for company.
“I’ve always suspected that while my father actually aroused himself sufficiently to father my sister, my grandfather is my real father. Otherwise, I cannot really explain the difference between her and me.”
Dhammakarati gets out of his chair to stand next to Francis by the window. “It’s a hauntingly beautiful and tragic story, Francis. But it’s your past. What are you doing to counter this kind of karma?”
Brutally brought
out of his romantic self-pity, Francis turns sharply to the monk. “I thought that would have been obvious by now. It may not make sense to you, but I am trying to create some sort of meaning in my life. You disappoint me!” His voice rises. “I thought you were trained to see through the stories we tell each other and ourselves.” He walks away from the window, then pours himself his fifth glass of whiskey and downs it in one gulp.
Dhammakarati is unfazed. “I am. But I want you to say it out loud, Francis. You’ve never talked about this before, have you?”
Francis shakes his head.
“I thought not. Tell me, and I assure you, your fate will be easier to bear.”
For a minute or two, the monk and the playboy stare at each other like two opponents about to confront each other physically. Then Francis shakes off his disappointment. “Early on, I knew I needed a course. I have my mother’s passion, but not her scatterbrained way of going about it. I needed something to keep my mind occupied. And regardless of my reluctant admiration for my grandfather, I was always ashamed of the means he used to make his way back into fortune. It was obvious for me to concentrate on the business world. Not only because that was my grandfather’s playground, but also because it is the modern equivalent of ultimate power. The business community is, indeed, the fifth power of state. The fifth column, if you like.”
Francis pours himself another drink and sips it. “I can’t have children. Or rather, I don’t want to continue our lineage. My sister was sterilized a long time ago, and I have sworn off children. So, the buck stops here. Which it should. Which leaves me with just one other way of paying back, of trying to reverse or at least stop what you would call the karmic imprint. And that is exactly what I am doing: attempting to weed out the worst sinners in business. The greedy, the corrupt, the selfish. That’s my mission. That’s what I can do to earn my right to be here and break the curse of a family long due for extinction. That’s where my money is going.”
Dhammakarati walks over to Francis, placing a hand on his shoulder. A single tear rolls down the monk’s cheek. There is a moment of complete silence. It is almost as if even the city is holding its breath. For a short while, the two men are enveloped in an almost tangible egalitarian love. Then Francis breaks the spell. “Let’s go over what we know of the case once again. I never expected to be happy anyway.”
Chapter 17
The Prada shop on the corner of Mercer and Prince in SoHo is an ostentatious display of disdain for money. It is grand on a scale that breaks the limits. It is designed to impress, conceived to demonstrate style over financial ruin. Francis strolls the ground floor in this, his neighborhood shop, and marvels at the glaring waste of space in a city that has so little of it.
He has followed Suzanna Peterson from Fifth Avenue to Broadway. First by foot and then by taxi, and now, ironically, she has brought him to his own backyard. She disappears into a changing room, a bunch of clothes over her arms. He installs himself on a settee outside, obviously meant for the sugar daddies who usually foot the bill. A sales rep is quick to offer him tea or champagne. He opts for tea.
A few minutes later, Suzanna Peterson comes out wearing a wool forties-style dress suit, looking like the coolest of Second World War British spies. At first, she doesn’t notice him, but goes straight to the large double-leaved mirror, turning this way and that, assessing how the outfit suits her.
He lets her twirl for a little while before commenting, “Very becoming. That is if you want to maintain that unapproachable ice maiden look of yours. Quite forbidding.” Suzanna Peterson turns sharply toward him, hands on hips. “And who might you be?”
He stands up, offering his hand, which she refuses. He smiles regretfully. “I am Francis Scott-Wren, a close friend of Smith, Turner, and Stevenson. You know, your commercial brotherhood? Or rather, the one you are officially connected to?”
“What do you want?” She’s leaning against the mirrors, one hip pushed out, a challenging glint in her eyes. The epitome of coolness. This is a woman who doesn’t scare easily, Francis thinks. She must have water for blood if she can keep up this front in a situation that must have caught her unawares. He pats the settee next to him, indicating she should sit.
“I’m fine,” she snaps.
“All right, just thought you might make yourself comfortable since we will be here for a little while. No?” He pats the settee again, goading her. She doesn’t take the bait. “I am here to let you in on how your life will turn out in the next forty years. Or rather, to present you with two quite different tracks that your life can follow, depending entirely on which choice you’ll make in the next few minutes.” The woman is still looking quite hostile, but at least she’s now reaching out for a small stool. She must have realized that this is no ordinary social call, nor is it a prank.
Francis continues. “Tomorrow morning, a story about an intricate and long-standing black-market racket will hit the news. Trafficking of human organs. You know, livers, kidneys, et cetera. It could be argued that this is quite a nice thing to do, given the fact that these organs help hundreds of very sick people. The only glitch is that the organs were donated if that’s the right word by poor and destitute people looking to make a few bucks on the only things they have left to offer: their inner body parts. A kidney goes for about fifteen thousand dollars and often much, much less, and then it’s sold to affluent sick people for two-hundred and fifty thousand. Not a bad deal, if you can get in on it.”
Francis leans back, correcting his tie, taking his time. Then, snapping his fingers, he exclaims, “Ah, but wait, you are in on it!”
He gets up, walks across the room, and gestures to the sales rep. A few minutes later, she returns with glasses and champagne. Francis waits for her to serve them each a glass and then leave again before he raises his glass to Suzanna. “I think a toast is in order! Your little brainchild because it was yours, wasn’t it? must’ve made a few people very, very wealthy.”
The woman sits frozen like a statue, a glass of champagne in her unmoving hand. Francis toasts her, ignoring her failure to reciprocate. “Anyway, like I said, the story will be in the papers tomorrow. Front page, big font, would be my guess. The case has been blown wide open. Everybody in on it has been named. And will wake up to seeing their faces glaring back at them from their favorite morning paper.”
The woman hasn’t lost any of her cool appearance, but her fingers are curled very tightly around the stem of the champagne glass, giving her emotions away.
Francis takes another sip. “You might want to change into something you can leave the store in. I’m taking you to lunch.” The woman does not object but disappears into the changing room. She reappears in a dark, severe business suit. “I’m just going to get this,” she says, holding out the wool suit to the sales rep, who has reappeared.
The nerve she has, Francis thinks with a smile. I think I could work with her.
Shortly after, they are seated at a corner table across the street in Mercer Kitchen’s lower-level dining area. The woman says, “Why don’t you cut the farce and tell me exactly what you want? I don’t care much for embellishments. Just give it to me straight.” She takes a bite of the raw tuna and wasabi pizza, the specialty of the kitchen, which they both ordered.
Francis continues to eat in silence for a few minutes, then lays down his cutlery, dabs his lips with the linen napkin, and starts explaining in a tone of voice he might have used for Jo. No reason to pimp the story with this woman.
“My organization…” He holds up a hand since she’s about to ask to which organization he belongs. “My organization knows that you are not only heavily involved in the black-market organ trafficking I mentioned earlier, but that it actually is your brainchild. My guess is that this is a leftover from your aborted stint at medical school before you joined the legal profession. Something must have happened there which I am obviously quite curious about to get you into a scheme so unethical, so cynical, so downright wicked. But you are not likely to tell m
e what happened to you. And I don’t really need to know. It is enough that we know of every single deal you’ve brokered within the last six years and that we have copious documentation to prove it.”
While he talks, the woman calmly continues eating her pizza, as if Francis were recounting another trivial day at the office.
“Now, at some point, this must have bored you because you branched out into white laundering for the mob. Being in a highly beneficial position to get ahold of suitable business deals, thanks to your role as senior partner in Smith and the rest of the gang and having the legal finesse to cover them up. Well done!” Francis lifts his glass of mineral water to her. She doesn’t respond, but her eyes never leave his face. She’s waiting to see where he’s taking her.
“I have no quarrel with what you are doing. I find it repulsive, but it’s none of my business. And I can easily sympathize with anybody wanting to spice up an ordinary career. However, I care a lot about your legitimate brotherhood and the fact that your fall will damage the firm significantly. I cannot let that happen. So, allow me to attempt to convince you why you should stop doing what you are doing.” He pauses as the waiter offers coffee and dessert. They both settle for double espressos and dark chocolate. He quite likes this woman.
“My guess is that you don’t do this for money, but for the thrill. You are far too shrewd and bright to be a lawyer, and since you have always been single, my bet is that you have been looking for excitement all your life. Which is why we will use two different means to convince you to change tracks. Firstly, let me explain what will happen if you don’t stop and I mean right now, today any extracurricular activities and stick to the boring, but rather safe law. All your funds are being transferred to a secret account as we speak. Your entire savings, as a matter of fact. From now on, your salary will be reduced by forty percent. This will allow you to maintain your current lifestyle.” Francis looks at her to see whether she comprehends. She does, he guesses, but there is no way she’s letting him see how she feels.
Game of Greed Page 13
