Beatrice knocked on the open door to Trip’s office. Russ peered in. The office was swathed in darkness, but he could make out Trip’s silhouette. He was facing a broad window, looking out on the hypnotic Midtown skyline to the west. Russ looked too. There was the newspaper. There was Inferno. There was Russ’s new apartment. So many places Russ would rather be.
A Tizio lamp clicked on. Mr. Abercrombie sat on a long, sleek sofa. The lamp, a small furnace, lit the stony crags of his broad face. He turned to look at Russ, and gave what might have been a smile. The light caught his gold tooth and it glinted. He wore a black leather jacket and a crimson tie. Monster hands, matted with hair, rested lightly on his knees, as though poised to grab. “Are you all right, Ickes?” he asked. The almost-smile vanished. “You look like you swam here.”
Russ opened his mouth to respond, but no words came out. He heard Beatrice close the door behind him. He was alone with them.
Trip turned around. His sculpted hair was the color of champagne, and that amazing grin was, as ever, a treasury of enticing enamel. His shirt had exquisite blue striping—stitched in London, Russ knew. With a dancer’s grace, Trip took his seat at the steel-and-glass Boltz desk that held his laptop and phone.
“Take a load off, champ,” he drawled. Russ sat in the chair in front of Trip’s desk. Trip grinned at him. “Now, what’s all this I hear about trouble?”
Before Russ could speak, Mr. Abercrombie got to his feet. He loomed above the desk and straightened his leather lapels. “I’ll let you fellas have your talk,” he said, and he stabbed at Trip’s phone console with a thick finger. “Bea, baby,” he rumbled at the phone, “whip up one of those cappuccinos of yours for me, okay, hon?” And then he winked at Trip and was gone.
“So, tell me all about it, champ,” Trip said when the door had shut.
Russ licked his arid lips. “I told you, I got a call from the U.S. Attorney’s office. They want me downtown, tomorrow at 10.”
“Did they say what it was about?” Trip was supernaturally calm.
“Not a word. But what else could it be?”
How could Trip keep smiling? “Let’s assume, for argument’s sake, that it is about … our arrangement. What are you going to tell them?”
A high-pitched hysteria invaded Russ’s speech. “I’m not going to admit that I’m involved in an insider trading scheme, if that’s what you mean,” he squeaked.
“And you’re not going to mention me either, right, champ?”
“Of course not. If it comes up, I’ll say that we went to college together but that I haven’t seen or heard from you for years. Unless …”
Trip’s smile blinked off. “Unless what, champ?”
“What if they have some evidence? What if they have your trading records, and see that you bought those stocks the day before the ‘Street Talk’ columns appeared in the paper? Then what do I do?”
Tapping a finger on the glass desktop, Trip nodded slowly to himself. “They’d still have to prove a link between you and me.”
“How hard is that? I write about a stock, you buy the stock right before. Sounds like a link to me.”
“They won’t have my trading records, champ. The stocks and the cash go through so many cutouts and offshore accounts—the feds don’t have enough accountants to even get to first base.”
“But they could know that there was unusual activity in those stocks just before my columns came out. They could know that was buying or selling, even if they don’t know who. They’ll figure benefited.”
“Sadly, champ, they will likely conclude that that someone is you. So I wish you the best of luck.”
Russ’s face grew slack. “What … what are you telling me, Trip?”
“I’m telling you, champ, that I don’t want to see you again. I have better ways of making a buck.” Trip favored him with another smile.
“You … you bastard. You ungrateful bastard!” Russ was yelling now. “Who do you think you are?”
Trip’s smile took a malevolent twist. “I think you’d better get out of my office before Mr. Abercrombie comes back.”
Russ glared at him. “Listen, you self-centered son of a bitch!” he shouted. “I’ll tell the feds every little last bit about you. I’ll destroy you!”
“You can prove nothing. Get out.”
“No? You don’t think I recorded our calls? I’ll give the tapes to the feds, and tell them what the code words mean. It’s your voice on the other end of those calls, Trip. And we have credit card charges for the same amount at the same time at Per Se. I bought you drinks at Inferno. People there saw us together. All that sounds like a link to me.”
Trip jumped to his feet. His eyes flared and his perfect lips drew back in a snarl. In all the years he’d known Trip, it was only the second time Russ had seen him lose that famous cool. A vision of the first time flashed in Russ’s brain—Trip’s bare back, the sweat in his blond hair. Trip smacked his hand on the desk, and the vision vanished. He was screaming now.
“You’re nothing! Nothing, nothing, nothing!”
Russ gathered his breath. “Or maybe,” Russ said, his voice shaking, “maybe I could gut it out and protect you. The feds can’t have proof that I bought and sold those stocks—because I didn’t. They can accuse all they like, but without proof … Maybe this is all just a fishing expedition.”
Trip spread his hands on the glass desktop and trapped his ire behind a set of white teeth. “You’d protect me?” he asked.
“I would, Trip. But we’d have to be much more careful about things. And I’d need more money.”
“More money,” Trip repeated. He nodded to himself and drummed his fingers on the desk. Then he looked at Russ with a sly light in his eye. “We’ll take it out of Abercrombie’s share. I’ll make an excuse about why the count is lighter. He’s not that smart.”
Russ’s eyes widened. “But what if he objects? What if he wants to see some proof—trading tickets or account statements?”
Trip laughed nastily. “The guy wouldn’t know a trading ticket if it jumped up and bit his ass, and he has no clue about how the market works. I could show him my cable bill and he wouldn’t know the difference. Look, if he complains, I’ll tell him we’re suspending operations until the heat is off. You and I will keep on with our arrangement, and I’ll pass you the cash directly.”
“And if, somehow, the feds link us? What then?”
Trip gave a graveyard laugh. “Then we give them Abercrombie. We tell them he forced us—threatened us at gunpoint. I mean, the guy has a criminal record like a phone book. Who are they going to believe—him or us? We just have to stick together, champ, just like we always have.”
Russ paused, gulping air. His vision was blurry and his voice was trembling when he spoke. “Trip, I … Don’t you know how I feel about you?”
Before Trip could do more than raise an eyebrow, there was a rap at the door. Beatrice looked in. “Your Los Angeles call,” she said.
Trip grinned and glanced at his watch. “No rest for the weary, champ. And anyway, you’d better get going. Don’t want to be seen loitering around here, after all. Unless there was something else …?”
Russ’s throat closed up. “Nothing else,” he said, then bolted through the door. There was no sign of Mr. Abercrombie, and Beatrice said nothing as he hurried by. In what seemed like no time he was in the empty subway station. He leaned back against the dirty tiles and tried to calm himself. Images of Trip reeled through his head.
He heard a low rumble and felt the building wind of an oncoming train. He smelled something acrid and opened his eyes. He wasn’t alone on the platform anymore. Mr. Abercrombie towered over him. And behind him, steaming with anger, stood Trip.
Abercrombie’s massive hand closed around Russ’s slender arm. “Get the other one, Trip,” he said.
Trip recoiled. “Are you crazy? I shouldn’t even be down here. You were supposed to take care of this yourself.”
“I said, get the other arm.” The
fiery menace seethed out of Mr. Abercrombie, and Trip took tentative hold of Russ’s other arm. Russ felt the tremble in his hand.
“What are you doing?” Russ cried as they dragged him to the edge of the platform.
“You know the feds will crack you like a walnut, champ.” Trip’s voice was soft in his ear. “And I just can’t let that happen. I like the income stream from you, but the risk profile is up too much.”
The subway train sped into the station, a thirty-five-ton, stainless steel behemoth with harsh eyelike headlights. It rolled at them with inhuman force.
The train was almost upon them when Mr. Abercrombie dropped Russ’s arm and, with amazing agility for such a big man, took Trip by the throat. Trip let out a shriek and let go of Russ, who stumbled backward, away from the platform edge.
Trip’s hands flailed feebly at Mr. Abercrombie. His gorgeous teeth were bared in pain and panic. Mr. Abercrombie lifted Trip from his feet and tossed him to the tracks.
The subway motorman looked up in horror to see some-one stumbling off the platform. He hit the horn and then the brakes. The first car shuddered as it bumped over the body, and the cars kept rolling past amid the brakes’ banshee wail.
Mr. Abercrombie took Russ by the arm again and hauled him out the turnstile and up the stairs. Russ followed the massive form numbly, along the empty street and into a black car parked in an alleyway. Mr. Abercrombie got into the driver’s seat and started the engine. “We gotta get out of here.”
“Trip,” Russ whispered.
“I gotta hand it to you, Ickes,” he heard Mr. Abercrombie say through a fog, “you had him pegged—how fucking quick he’d be to sell me down the river if he thought the feds were coming through the door. No fucking loyalty at all. I hate that. You had him pegged, all right. And that crap about the U.S. Attorney calling—that was nice touch, just like the thing with the intercom. Bea kept the line open and I heard the whole thing. You did okay tonight, Ickes—a real brain trust.”
Mr. Abercrombie’s huge hands worked the wheel. Sirens broke the night, coming in their direction. Russ felt water coursing down his waxen cheeks, and it wasn’t sweat. Abercrombie’s rumble filled the car.
“Bigger cut for everybody without Trip, and I won’t have to listen to the girls at the club complain no more either. And truth is, I was getting tired of that attitude of his. Not that smart Sheesh, what an asshole.”
“I wanted to tell him—”
Three cop cars zoomed past, a carnival of light and noise. The black car continued toward the Queensboro Bridge. Russ sighed and Mr. Abercrombie shook his head.
“Like you said, Ickes, he served his purpose. And the way he treated you—an old friend like you—it was long overdue. It’d been me, I’d’ve taken care of it long ago. He had it coming, so enough with the guilt already. You can’t blame yourself. Trip is brown bread. Dead.” Mr. Abercrombie glanced over at Russ. “Are you all right, Ickes? Are you crying?”
“I wanted to tell him …”
“Hey, cheer up, pal—everything’s gonna be fine. We’re gonna make mucho bucks together, you and me.” With something almost like affection, Mr. Abercrombie dropped a gorilla hand on Russ’s shoulder, near his windpipe. He turned and looked at Russ. “Come on, champ. Make me rich.”
ROUGH JUSTICE
BY JAMES HIME
200 Park Avenue
I should be sitting here trying to figure out how to say goodbye to my wife.
Instead, I’m sitting here thinking I should have known the wheels were fixing to come off this thing the instant I spit that cough drop onto the Contessa’s nipple in full view of the Hell Bitch.
That was all the omen a man could ask for.
I get to my feet and look down at Katy, all hooked up to her feeding tubes and what have you. Laid out like some old person. Instead of the vibrant and amazing young woman I married not all that long ago.
All I can think to say is, “I’m sorry, darling.”
She looks at me and her eyes are wet. “Don’t, Billy. Please don’t.”
She reaches for my hand and I let her take it and squeeze it and hold it to her sunken cheek, and I can feel her tears on my skin.
I bend down and kiss her forehead and whisper that I love her, and then I retrieve my hand and walk out of the hospital room and take the elevator down and go outside and hail a cab. I tell the driver to take me to the NYPD’s Midtown North Precinct house.
That’s when I see the guy walking toward me with his hand inside his coat.
I need to back up some. To the Day of the Cough Drop Incident. To what happened that afternoon.
And to what happened even before that, on the morning of the Incident.
And, come to think of it, to what happened the night before that … .
It happened in the Hell Bitch’s office on the afternoon of the Day of the Cough Drop Incident. Half the floor could hear it and it was horrible.
It was the complete works. Screaming, invective, cussing. What a fuck-up I was. How I had embarrassed her and the firm in front of one of our most important clients, a woman with connections across the Continent. Who would no doubt tell the story of my faux pas to many extremely rich and important people, potential clients, who would make up their minds on the basis of that anecdote alone never to do business with us.
On and on it went.
I sat across the desk from her and played mental rope-a-dope. Covered my ego with a blank expression and watched the spit fly from the Hell Bitch’s mouth as she yelled at me and I wondered why I hadn’t had sense enough to pursue a career in dentistry. Wondered what made me think coming to Wall Street to practice law in-house at a secretive private bank was a good idea in the first place.
When she started to wind down I thought, Well, there’s no time like the present.
I said, “Okay. For at least the fifteenth time, I apologize.
I’ll write a letter of apology to the Contessa. I’ll offer to have her dress cleaned. But there’s one more thing you need to know. Something else happened this morning.”
I told her about my ride uptown with Stu Spagnoletti, and I watched the fear and paranoia rise up in her like a fever. When I was done, her eyes were wide and her hands were shaking and she looked like a clown in some carnival of the deranged.
She stood, pulled herself erect to her full five feet, and screamed, “GET OUT! GET THE FUCK OUT!”
I was only too happy to oblige.
On my way back to my office I stopped by Frank Biallo’s. I’m not even sure why. Maybe just to be in the presence of a fellow sufferer. As I got there, the guy who delivered the interoffice mail, a stooped old man who wore a blue smock and whom everybody called Sarge, was walking out and taking the helm of his mail cart.
I looked in just as Frank was fishing an inner-office envelope out of his inbox. It bulged oddly. Frank opened it and extracted a paper ball. He smoothed it out on his desk and examined it and looked up. “I guess Stecher didn’t like my memo,” he said.
“I have a suggestion.”
“What’s that, Tex?”
“Let me go to my office and call home. Then let’s you and me go get drunk.”
Frank hesitated. He looked at the crumpled paper on his desk. “I think maybe I’d better stay here and do some rewriting.”
I shrugged. “Suit yourself, podna.” I turned to go.
“Hey, Tex?”
“What?”
“You okay?”
I grinned. “Fine as frog hair.”
When I got to my office I called Katy. “I’m not completely sure but I may have just gotten my ass fired.”
“Oh, Billy. I’m so sorry. Maybe it’s for the best.”
“Maybe.”
“Why don’t you come home?”
“In a while. I want to go for a walk. Maybe get a drink.”
“I’ve got good news.”
“Yeah?”
“Stu already found work for Hiram. And a place for him to live.”
I he
sitated. “Great. What’s he doing?”
“Limo driver.”
“Katy? I need you to tell Carmen something and ask her to pass it along to Stu.”
“What, honey?”
“Stu asked me for a favor this morning. Tell her to tell him I’m sorry, but I don’t think I’m going to be able to deliver for him.”
“Okay.”
When I hung up I checked my e-mail. There was one from the Hell Bitch, sent after I’d left her office, telling me to be at a working group session on the Park Avenue deal the next morning at 10 o’clock. I thought, Great. Guess I still have a job after all.
But I knew there was no point in hanging around there the rest of the day—I was fried. I shrugged on my suit jacket and overcoat and headed out into the blizzard.
That’s the night the Hell Bitch disappeared.
But for that storm I doubt there would have been any Cough Drop Incident to begin with. So blame it on the execrable New York weather.
The morning of the Incident the snow had started at day-break and I found myself standing on the sidewalk outside my apartment building trying but failing to hail a cab, and by that time the streets were a mess. After I’d been at it ten minutes I looked at my watch and decided maybe I’d best just walk. I was of course utterly unaware that, before the day was out, I would perpetrate a cough drop assault on a client and then endure the cussing-out from the Hell Bitch that I have already described.
A black Town Car slid to the curb and out of my building came Stu Spagnoletti, accompanied by a guy who looked like he could bench press the Brady Bunch. They were both dressed in double-breasted overcoats and fedoras and they made straight for the Town Car, but when Stu saw me he stopped and said, “Billy!”
“Stu.”
“You tryin’ to catch a cab? A cab, you’re never gonna catch in this fuckin’ weather, okay? C’mon. We’re goin’ uptown. We’ll give ya a lift.”
Stu headed for the Town Car but I hesitated.
Stu looked back. “C’mon! Get in, before your balls freeze off out here!”
I followed him into the car.
Behind the wheel was another slab of beef who looked at me in the rearview mirror. If it wasn’t a hostile look then I would not particularly care to see a hostile look from this hombre. Stu leaned forward and said, “Jimmy. On the way uptown we want to stop at 200 Park.” Stu looked at me. “That’s where this fancy bank of yours is, right?”
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