by Stephen Frey
Gillette grimaced. “That must have been hell.”
“It made me cry when I was a kid. When I was a teenager, it just pissed me off.”
“Did you ever talk to her about it?” Gillette asked, thinking about the day he’d approached his mother about her drinking. He was sixteen, and he’d tried to talk to her calmly one afternoon in the kitchen. Getting out only a few words before she’d erupted in a violent rage, hurling pots and pans at him until he ran. His father had warned him that night not to try again, and he never had. He’d never told his father about how he’d saved her life that day she’d fallen in the pool, either. “Ever try to help her?”
“Once.”
“What happened?”
“She pulled a gun on me, told me she never did drugs,” Stiles replied. “Told me she’d kill me if I ever told anybody she did.”
“Jesus.”
“After that I joined a gang and dropped out of school.”
“I doubt your grandmother was happy.”
“She wasn’t, but she couldn’t control me when I was a teenager. Nobody could.”
“Then why is she responsible for where you are today?”
“You know,” Stiles said, pointing at Gillette. “You’re like a dog on a bone. You just won’t let things go.”
“Thanks.”
“Some things are personal. Sometimes you need to know when to back off.”
“You want to tell me,” Gillette said calmly. “We all want to tell our secrets to someone,” he said, repeating what Tom McGuire had said.
“What are you, some kind of amateur psychiatrist?”
“I analyze people all the time, Quentin. It’s the most important skill I have. I have to motivate people. You can’t motivate them until you understand them.”
“Don’t you mean manipulate them? Isn’t that really what you do?” Stiles looked over at Gillette. “Yeah, I’ve been watching.”
“Call it what you want,” Gillette said sharply, “but I have to be able to make people believe in themselves even when everything is falling down around them. If that takes a certain amount of manipulation, so be it. In the end, they’re better off and so am I. Which is all that matters.”
“Just because you think you can get inside other people’s heads doesn’t mean you can get inside mine.”
“You told me about your mother’s drug problem.”
“Yeah, I did,” Stiles murmured, looking out the window. “I haven’t told anyone about that in a long time.”
“So,” Gillette pushed, “why is your grandmother responsible for where you are?”
Stiles checked the intersection while they waited for the light to change. “One day me and my boys get into it with a gang from a neighborhood a few blocks over, and I end up getting shot in the chest.”
“One of the scars you showed me,” Gillette said, pointing to the spot on his own chest. “Right?”
“Yeah. When I’m better, my grandmother has two neighbors drag me down to the Army recruiting office in Times Square and make me enlist. I was cursing and screaming all the way down in the cab, but it was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“They might have dragged you down there, Quentin, but they couldn’t make you enlist. You had to do that yourself.”
“True. But, while I’m standing there looking at this hard-assed-looking white guy with a high and tight haircut and a mean-motherfucker stare, I realize I have to get out of Harlem. Even though I hate the guy, I know he’s my best shot at making something of myself. Otherwise there’ll be another gang fight, and I’ll end up getting shot again. Things might not have turned out all right that time.”
“Is your grandmother still alive?” Gillette asked.
“Yup. She still lives in the same projects.”
“How old is she?”
“Seventy-two.”
“What about your mother? Do you keep in touch with her?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“She was killed a week after I left for basic. Shot by a cop in a drug bust at a crack house a few blocks from my grandmother’s place.”
Gillette looked away.
“What about you?” Stiles asked after a long pause. “Where’d you grow up?”
Gillette turned back around. He hadn’t expected Stiles to be interested. “Beverly Hills.”
Stiles groaned. “A 9-0-2-1-0 brat.”
“You know it,” Gillette said unapologetically. “Spent most of my time in high school at the beach playing volleyball and surfing.”
“And chasing girls.”
“Yep.”
“What does your father do?”
Gillette looked out the window. “He’s dead.”
“Oh.” Stiles hesitated. “How?”
“Plane crash.”
“How long ago?”
“Fourteen years.”
They were silent for a while.
“Before he died,” Gillette finally spoke up, “he ran an L.A. investment bank. Made a killing when one of the big New York houses came in and paid way too much for it. Stayed on to run it for the New York people for two years after the deal, then went into politics. Won a seat as a United States congressman in his first campaign, then became a senator after one term in Congress.”
“Never went without very much did you?”
“I can’t remember ever going without anything,” Gillette admitted matter-of-factly. “Christmas was just another day.” Until he was twenty-two, anyway.
“I didn’t know there was a Christmas until I was six and one of my friends told me about it.”
“That’s tough.”
“Got any brothers and sisters?” Stiles wanted to know.
Gillette took a deep breath. He’d lied to Faith about this one, too. Not because he didn’t trust Faith. He just didn’t want to talk about it. But Stiles had revealed some painful things, and it wouldn’t be fair to hold back. “I have an older brother and a younger sister.”
“Keep in touch with them?”
Gillette shook his head.
“Why not?”
“I just don’t.”
“Where did you go to college?” Stiles continued, unfazed by the warning tone in Gillette’s voice.
“Princeton.”
“Figures. Dad get you in?”
“I think the performing arts building he paid for probably had something to do with it.”
“And after Princeton?”
“Stanford Business School. Then I joined Goldman Sachs. That’s an investment bank based here in New York.”
Stiles grunted. “I know what Goldman Sachs is,” he said, irritated.
“Oh. Well, I spent a couple of years in their mergers and acquisitions group before Bill Donovan offered me a job at Everest Capital.”
“I thought Goldman Sachs was the most prestigious investment bank in the world. Why’d you leave?”
“Investment bankers are nothing but agents. All they do is take commissions. They make money off other people’s sweat. They make good dough doing it, but I didn’t like it. Besides, the real money is in private equity. So is the real satisfaction.”
“Why’s private equity so much more satisfying?”
“Because you take risks. Lots of risks. You put your money where your mouth is. Investment bankers risk other people’s money.”
“Is that what gets you off?”
“What?”
“Taking risks. Is that why you play pool in Harlem with no money in your pocket?”
Gillette closed his eyes and allowed his head to fall back against the seat. “Yeah,” he admitted.
Stiles chuckled wryly. “How much money is enough, Christian? I mean, your family’s already wealthy. Why do you need more? What good is one more beach house that you visit a couple of days a year? One more penthouse apartment in one more European city? Why not enjoy life, instead?”
Gillette stared hard at Stiles for a few moments, Isabelle’s image running through his mind.
Then Faith’s. “It isn’t really about the money.”
“You just said it was.”
“Not in the sense that I can buy more things with it. It’s a scorecard. That’s all.”
“Ah.” Stiles nodded. “Well, at least you understand that.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s all about the game for you, all about power and control, about being the puppet master. Making people do what you want and seeing how many balls you can keep in the air at once. Finding out how much capacity your brain really has. How much pressure you can take.” Stiles checked the intersection ahead. They were only a few blocks from Everest. “It’s all about finding your limits, isn’t it?”
Stiles was exactly right, though Gillette wasn’t going to admit it. “How would you know?”
“You aren’t the first big-money guy I’ve protected, and you’re mostly all the same. You work eighty-hour weeks for twenty years, then you wake up at forty and wonder where the hell your life has gone. So you take six months off to travel the world and spend time with your family. To really get to know them, you tell yourself. After about three months, you find out they aren’t really that interesting. Or, worse, they don’t find you very interesting. You realize you’ve got to get back in the game, so one morning you call an old friend who owns a small but growing financial firm and suddenly you’re in the middle of it again and you couldn’t be happier.” Stiles glanced at a man standing on a corner near the Town Car as they waited at a red light. “It’s a curse for guys like you. It’s in your blood. You never get rid of it.” He looked over at Gillette. “And don’t let yourself believe that Isabelle is the answer.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I saw the way you were looking at her this morning, and I heard a lot of your conversation. Don’t let yourself think there’s a fairy tale in all that, that you could be her knight in shining armor. Like I said, it’s something you have to watch out for. I’ve seen it before with you rich guys.”
“Quentin, I—”
“Rich, good-looking white boy plucks vulnerable Hispanic girl out of poverty and they end up riding off into the sunset together on a white horse. I know how you think the book reads. Seems romantic, but the reality is very different. She won’t fit into your world. Both of you will end up being sorry.”
“You’re jumping the gun a little. I haven’t even gone out with her.”
“Don’t.”
Gillette chuckled. “Quentin, you’re jealous. That’s what this is all about.”
“You’re wrong. I’m just trying to give you good advice.”
“I thought you didn’t talk to your clients.”
“I usually don’t,” Stiles agreed hesitantly.
“So, why me?”
“I don’t know,” he answered lamely.
“Well, she and I are going to dinner tonight.”
Stiles shrugged. “Fine. I don’t give a shit.”
They were quiet for a few minutes.
“Are you married?” Gillette finally asked.
“Divorced.”
“Kids?”
“No.”
Gillette hesitated, thinking about the best way to ask the question, but there was only one way—directly. “Was your wife white?”
Stiles’s expression remained impassive for a few moments, then he nodded.
“Was she wealthy?”
“Not like you, but her family lived in a nice part of town. You know, big brick houses and Mexican maids.”
“Any black families in the area?”
“Not within a mile.” Stiles looked over. “I checked.”
So Stiles had experienced it firsthand. No wonder he was ringing the warning bell. “My mother was an alcoholic,” Gillette said. “On good days she just scared the hell out of me stumbling around the house. On bad days she got her kicks chasing me with a belt.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” Gillette paused. “When my father died, my mother cut me off from the family money. She closed my checking account, canceled my credit cards, everything.” Gillette looked over and saw that Stiles was suddenly hanging on every word. “I was riding my motorcycle cross-country after graduating from Princeton when my father died. I got the word when I was in western Pennsylvania visiting my grandfather, my father’s father. He was poor all his life until Dad made lots of money and made sure he was okay. But he stayed in the same little mining town even after Dad gave him the money. So I’m staying there when my mother called to tell my grandfather his son had died. She called to tell me I was off the payroll. That I was completely on my own. From that point on I had to beg and borrow until I got on my feet.” He smiled grimly. “That’s when I picked up pool. It took me almost six weeks to get back to California, and I played every day for food money. You get good fast when the price of losing is starving.”
“Why did it take you six weeks to get back to the West Coast? I thought you said you had a motorcycle.”
“The clutch burned out right as I got to my grandfather’s place. It was in the shop when my mother called to cut me off. All I had on me was a hundred bucks, so I sold the thing for a grand to the mechanic who was working on it, and I road freight trains back to California.”
Stiles gave Gillette a look that suggested he thought Gillette was truly insane. “What?”
“Yeah. There was a Conrail main line that went through my grandfather’s town. I jumped on an empty box car one afternoon while the train was dropping off coal cars at the electric plant at the edge of town. Six weeks later, I was in L.A. I love trains now.”
“Why didn’t you ask your grandfather for cash? You said your father gave him money when he sold the investment bank.”
Gillette shook his head. “He didn’t know how things were between my mother and me. It would have killed him to find out. Besides, I don’t ask anyone for money.”
“Then how did you pay for Stanford Business School?”
“Worked two jobs and took out a student loan.”
“But I thought you didn’t ask anyone for money.”
“When it’s their business, I don’t care.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And I paid back every cent of that loan. Early, too. I wasn’t one of those kids who welshed.” Gillette hesitated. “I’m telling you all this because I want you to know I’ve made everything I have on my own.”
Stiles was quiet for a few moments. “Why did your mother do it?” he finally asked. “Why did she cut you off?”
Gillette took a deep breath. “Because she wasn’t really my mother.”
Stiles gave Gillette a confused look. “What do you mean?”
“You asked me if I kept in touch with my brother and sister. I told you that I didn’t.”
“Yeah, so?”
“They’re actually my half brother and half sister,” Gillette answered, his voice a whisper. “My father had an affair with a young Hollywood actress.”
“And your stepmother couldn’t handle it.”
“It drove her insane.”
“Do you ever talk to your real mother?”
“I don’t even know who she is,” Gillette admitted. “All I know is that she’s a star now.”
As they turned onto Park Avenue from Fifty-first, a blue sedan darted alongside the Town Car, then slammed into the front passenger door of the vehicle, hurling Stiles into Gillette and Gillette against the door. Gillette’s head hit the window hard, and for a few seconds his vision blurred. When it cleared, he looked up and out the window. Directly into the barrel of a gun.
There was a single gunshot just as Stiles threw himself in front of Gillette.
Gillette strained his neck to see over Stiles’s shoulder, but the assassin was gone.
For a few moments Gillette heard someone moaning on the street outside the vehicle. Then nothing.
16
The Urge to Trust. Even the most skeptical and cynical among us are, at times, vulnerable to deception. In the sa
me way that we struggle to keep secrets to ourselves, we want to believe that those we’ve chosen to associate or partner with will not hurt us. Perhaps because we want to believe our ability to assess character is superior. Because we want to believe we are so endearing that others would hate to take advantage of us. Or because we desperately want to believe people are inherently good. For whatever reason, even the most experienced and savvy have their moments of vulnerability.
It is then that the enemy can advance.
GILLETTE HUSTLED ACROSS THE SIDEWALK toward the entrance to the Everest building. Stiles was a few feet ahead of him; one of Stiles’s men was close behind.
When they were through the revolving door and inside the elevator, Gillette leaned back against the car wall and let out a long breath. “Well, Quentin,” he said, “I bet you didn’t think the financial world would ever be this exciting.”
Stiles motioned to his subordinate to stay behind in the lobby, then pressed the button for thirty-two. He and Gillette were the only people in the car. “No, I didn’t,” he admitted, shaking his head. “Which reminds me, my fee’s going up.”
“Oh, I see,” Gillette shot back, his voice rising. “Things get a little rough and you bail on me.”
“I’m not bailing on you,” Stiles snapped. “I just want to get paid right for the risk. You understand that, don’t you? Just like in finance. Risk, reward.”
“What I understand is you’re changing the deal on me.”
“I didn’t get all the information when I signed on.”
“I told you about the limousine outside the church. That was all you needed to know.”
Stiles pointed at Gillette. “I’m gonna guess that at some point you changed a deal on somebody.”
“Well, I—”
“Besides, I’m not changing the deal,” Stiles interrupted. “I’m in, as agreed. And I will keep you alive.” He slipped his hands into his pockets and leaned back against the wall, too. “You sure as hell pissed somebody off, or you’ve got something they want.”
