This Is How It Really Sounds

by Stuart Archer Cohen

  “Is he guilty of something?”

  Kell shrugged. “Who’s innocent? But that’s irrelevant. They’ve got to feed somebody to the mob and it isn’t going to be the CEO. So Paul’s on the chopping block.”

  Peter considered it. There’d been a few investigations since the collapse, but the government always went after them clumsily, their understaffed enforcement departments issuing a string of heroic press releases at the outset and then bogging down in a swamp of motions and documents. Most of what he and Kell had done had taken place in areas where the law was vague or had been eliminated by lobbyists. He liked to joke that there was only one real crime on Wall Street: the crime of being obvious.

  Losers like Paul Gutterman, though, who plodded along on a lower plane, were much easier targets, and they could be sacrificed to protect the corporation, like a lizard shedding its tail to escape.

  “So what’s he doing here?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he wanted to get out before they confiscated his passport.”

  “Is it that bad?”

  “Oh, yeah!”

  “Why does he come running to you?”

  Kell cast his glance away to the side. “Between us?” He waited until Peter nodded. “He helped me out with information once in a while.”

  It was common: some hint of large movements about to happen, or a critical nod, like the microgesture in a poker game that indicated what cards they might be holding. Those sorts of relationships happened all the time. Peter himself had had many of them. They kept a person on top of the game, but they also tended to stray into the illegal. “Is there any chance of you catching what Paul’s got?”

  “No,” Kell said contemptuously. “They already went over me with a microscope and they couldn’t get anything. Believe me, they would have loved to knock me down a peg. I don’t do ‘humble’ very well.”

  “I’ve noticed.”

  They both laughed. “Seriously, where’d you go with Carol—”

  “Camille.”

  “Camille, the other night.”

  “We’ll get to that. Paul’s flown all the way to Shanghai to look you up. What’s he asking for?”

  “He wants to be in on something.”

  “To accrue in value while he’s in jail?”

  Kell shrugged, and Peter went on. “So that’s the favor he’s calling in: you put him in on something; he’ll keep quiet in front of the grand jury.”

  The bull-like lawyer seemed to wince almost imperceptibly; then he sputtered out a warm but discomforting laugh. “You are a cold SOB when you get down to it, aren’t you?”

  “Well, am I right?”

  “Maybe on some level there’s a grain of truth, but it’s not all like that.”

  “What part isn’t like that?”

  “Look…” Beneath his success, Kell had the underdog’s comprehension of disappointment and failure. “Say you’re Paul. You’re a modest guy. You’ve spent your life as a midlevel trader, doing what they told you and filling in the blanks that you knew they wanted filled in. You don’t get to take the corporate jet to the Caymans or the thousand-dollar lunch at Le Bernardin. You’re an underling, even though nobody comes out and says it. But when the shit hits the fan, you go down like an underling, with the CEO throwing his hands in the air and saying, Oh my, how did that happen? You’ve got one of my colleagues billing you seven hundred dollars an hour, and if your savings hold out long enough, he’ll get you a guilty plea and a suspended sentence. And that’s your life: you thought you’d scrape together a cottage in the Hamptons, not too far from the water, where you and your wife could bicycle down and watch the sunset, and instead you’ve got no wife, no money, and no career, and the only sunset you’re seeing is your own life going over the horizon.”

  At that moment Harrington felt his phone vibrating. He took it out and recognized the Long Island area code. It was Paul Gutterman. “You gave him my number?”

  “You two are old friends, aren’t you?”

  The phone kept buzzing, each cycle a fresh accusation. Harrington was relieved when it went to voice mail. “So, what are you doing for him?”

  “The Akron sewer system. I’m giving him a small piece as part of a Chinese name I’m incorporating. Technically, he should declare it, but it’s very hard to find if he doesn’t. He’s a footnote to a footnote to an addendum. And besides, there’s nothing illegal about it.” Kell shrugged. “I feel sorry for the guy. He’s lost everything.” With that, the lawyer changed the subject. “So what about this Camille woman. Who is she?”

  “She’s my tutor.”

  “No shit! And she took you to bed on your first night out? That’s a breach of protocol.”

  “I didn’t say she took me to bed.”

  “Get off it, Peter. You were running after her like a puppy.”

  Harrington laughed, shaking his head.

  “And Nadia’s cool with this?”

  “Well … I haven’t really worked that part out yet.”

  Kell laughed. “This is going to be entertaining. What’s she like?”

  “Interesting. She lives in a garden.”

  “Like a gnome?”

  “No, a real garden. One of those antique ones, with houses and ponds and miniature trees.”

  “How’d she swing that?”

  “She’s some kind of special tour guide. As I said, she’s interesting. There was a party there with artists and art dealers. Actually, we did some Ecstasy. I haven’t done that in about ten years.”

  “Ecstasy, eh? And she had it?”

  Harrington nodded. “I’m not really sure what to make of her.”

  “Same as the rest: you’re potential rich-husband material, and it’s just a matter of how she plays you. They’ve all got their styles, and the most interesting ones give you the most interesting ride.”

  “Yes, I know: in your world every couple is really just a successful financial arrangement.”

  “C’mon, don’t give me the chump act. You’ve got, what, eight hundred million in the bank? For her, you’re like a giant gold ingot with arms, legs, and a dick sticking out of it.”

  Harrington was irritated to hear Kell dragging the magical experience of the other night down to his own level. “For a man who’s so sentimental about his business relationships, you’re pretty damned businesslike about sentimental ones.”

  Kell laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “I’m just giving you a hard time, buddy. Have fun. Fall in love with the pretty Chinese girl. I’ll be the best man at your wedding.”

  Harrington turned to him as an afterthought. “You know, I’d like to poke through the old Crossroads database. You’ve got the most recent one here at the office.”

  Kell instantly became curious. “What for?”

  “Oh, I just wanted to check out a few investors, see how much they were in for when it blew up.”

  “We’re not feeling remorseful, are we?”

  “No. There’s a couple of small investors—distant family, that sort of thing. I’ve been thinking about, you know, maybe make them whole again. I’m talking about a few hundred thousand dollars. It’s not a lot of money, and it will get some of my relatives off my back.”

  The lawyer shrugged. “It’s your money.”

  Kell led him into the spare office and logged him in to the database. “Go crazy on it. We’ve got to take off in twenty minutes.”

  It took him a couple of tries to find Pete Harrington. The singer had invested late in the game, after he himself had sold his share. It was under the name of Jason Kiriakis Financial Services, probably his financial advisor, and the buy-in had been nearly eight million dollars. Now worth about a twentieth of that.

  So that’s what it had been about: money. Somebody had given him shitty advice on how to make an easy buck in the bond markets, and he’d bet wrong. Same old hypocrite bullshit! They always wanted to make a killing, and when the game went against them, they wanted to dump the blame on someone else. He felt like tellin
g him, Hey, idiot, I wasn’t even in Crossroads when it tanked! I had nothing to do with your financial problems! Just like all the assholes in New York. Suddenly, they were victims, even though the real losers had been the bank, or the pension fund, or the client, or the government, while they themselves got out with their fortunes intact, thank you. Middle-aged crybabies in Brooks Brothers diapers, tattling to the press. He would get to the bottom of this, very quietly and very privately, with no whining, and he’d deal with it.

  Kell knocked on the door; then cracked it open. “It’s time.”

  * * *

  The restaurant had given them a woody, rice-screened private room and seated the head of the Red Dragon group facing the door, in the position of honor. The two men from Shenzhen spoke perfect English. They were worldly Hong Kong capitalists who had raised office buildings all over China and were looking to diversify their holdings. Mr. Wu and Mr. Lam. Harrington saw a look pass between two of the men when he came into the room. He’d seen it before. Yes, he was that Peter Harrington.

  They began with the usual talk. One of the Hong Kong men had graduated from Oxford and the London School of Economics. The other was trained as a civil engineer and went back and forth between Hong Kong and Mumbai consulting on infrastructure projects. Both had spent lots of time in the United States and professed their admiration for the country and its people. “So we feel this project might be a good fit for us.”

  Kell warmed to this. “Your expertise in infrastructure would be a great asset.”

  The Chinese men had sat at tables like this from Hamburg to Dubai, but for all their poise, they seemed strangely ill at ease with him, preferring to direct their questions about regulatory law and utility rates to Kell. When Harrington said something, they would look at him uncomfortably and then quickly shift their attention back to his partner. Maybe it was his own paranoia, but they seemed to be staring at his broken nose. The meeting was floundering: it was polite enough, with all the questions and answers indicative of an incipient partnership, but the real reason for the lunch was to forge the personal bond necessary to business in China, and in that respect it was going badly.

  The food came, and the conversation turned to family and hobbies as they began to eat. Mr. Lam, it turned out, played badminton. He’d even competed in the Olympics.

  “I’m impressed!” Kell said.

  “But that was more than thirty years ago,” Lam returned modestly. “Now my son beats me!” He motioned to his partner. “Mr. Wu likes to ski. He is a fanatic.”

  Harrington sensed an opening at last. “I live for skiing! A few years ago, I took the entire winter off and skied at Aspen every day. I got in a hundred twenty-six days!”

  Wu smiled broadly. “I am jealous! In my best winter I only skied fifty-four days!”

  “Really! Where?”

  They began to compare resorts. Mr. Wu had skied in Switzerland and the French Alps, also in Harbin, though he made a face in answer to Harrington’s query about the Chinese areas. They both liked Gstaad. Harrington talked about the resorts in Utah and Colorado and the quality of the snow.

  “I would love to ski in America,” the Hong Kong man said eagerly.

  “Did you ever do any backcountry skiing?”

  Mr. Wu made a face. “I’m too old to go walking up a mountain! That’s for young people, like you! But isn’t it dangerous? With avalanches?”

  “No!” Harrington overplayed his expertise a bit. He’d only gone backcountry skiing three times. “If you’re careful, you’ve got an excellent chance of not dying in an avalanche.”

  Kell piped up. “The only thing dangerous for him is squash.”

  Mr. Wu didn’t understand.

  Harrington was surprised his partner had gone there, but he had no choice but to follow his lead. “This bruise,” he said, pointing at his nose, smiling. The lie felt almost completely natural, and he was relieved to be able to get the whole matter of his swollen face behind him. “I was playing squash and my opponent accidentally hit me in the face on his backswing.”

  The effect of the anecdote was immediate. The two Hong Kong men visibly stiffened. Mr. Wu smiled uncomfortably. “Yes,” he said, “that is unfortunate.”

  Harrington flailed at it, knowing somehow that he was making a mistake even as the words left his mouth. “It’s embarrassing, because people always assume it’s something far more interesting than that.”

  Wu gave him a strange, bulging-eyed nod, as if he were holding his breath, and both Chinese men turned to eating again, throwing the table into a paralyzed silence. With Kell’s help, the conversation resumed, though in a stilted and slightly formal way. The lunch dragged on awkwardly for another twenty minutes. Then the two Chinese men excused themselves with a promise to do more analysis on the venture. Kell watched them go, then turned back to his partner. “What the hell happened there?”

  “You had to bring up my nose! Just for laughs!”

  “You don’t think they were wondering? They were looking at you cross-eyed from the second they walked in. What the hell’s going on?”

  “I told you I did not want to come to this—”

  “That’s not your choice! You’re goddamned Peter Harrington, the big, bad, famous wolf! They want to look you in the eye and know they’re part of your pack and not one of the sheep!”

  “Maybe I’m tired of being Peter Harrington! Did you ever think of that?”

  Kell regarded him silently for a moment. “Is there something I need to know, Peter?”

  “Yes! Know that I’m not coming to any more meetings this week!” Harrington stood up. “Next week, I’m available for whatever dog-and-pony show you want to stage.”

  As he crawled through traffic back to his house, he wondered if the Hong Kong men had known all along. It almost seemed that way. That would explain their reaction when he’d told them the squash story. No one wanted to invest two hundred million dollars with someone who lied to them in the first hour of their acquaintance. But how would they have found out? Even if someone had posted cell-phone videos of an assault on the street, how would they have known who he was and gotten word to the two men so quickly? He was seized by the nonsensical notion that somehow Gutterman had seen it, and with that he imagined something even more horrible: that Conrad, his son, would see it, too. Good God!

  When he got back to his house, he frantically searched himself on the Internet. It was the usual stuff, with his own name and the musician’s battling for the top rankings. Just like always. He felt a lessening of the panic that had been stealing up on him, and the reprieve spurred him to write an e-mail to Conrad. He tried to write his son every couple of weeks, but within a few sentences his efforts always ended up the same way: if he told about his life in Shanghai, it would remind his son that he’d abandoned him. If he asked about school, it would come off as an accusation. He didn’t dare ask Conrad about his health or invite him to come visit. In the end, all he had was another stilted, unsent draft, saved along with a half dozen just like it.

  * * *

  The call came from Kell the next morning. He was surprised at Kell’s tone: dry and demanding. “I think you’d better come down here.”

  “What’s up?”

  “I think you know what’s up.”

  He responded in kind. “Actually, I don’t. Why don’t you tell me?”

  “This is a face-to-face-type conversation. Just meet me here at the office.”

  “I have an appointment with my trainer at nine.”

  Kell sounded urgent, almost angry. “Cancel it!”

  He showered and shaved. The swelling was almost completely gone now: there was only a slight puffiness and a shadow under both his eyes. At least that part of the experience was behind him. Yes, he’d been attacked, and he’d been shaken up by it, but he hadn’t been seriously hurt, and it really hadn’t changed anything. He’d rather just forget about it.

  He wondered if the meeting had to do with Gutterman. Gutterman must have asked for more, o
r wanted some other sort of perk to buy his silence. Or maybe the investigators had already uncovered the link between Gutterman and Kell, and he was trying to figure out how to respond.

  The traffic was parked, so Ma dropped him off at the station and he battled through the morning crowds, cheerful that his face was healing. Maybe he’d get together with Camille.

  Kell greeted him soberly and asked his secretary to hold his calls.

  “So,” Kell began when they were alone. He didn’t even give Harrington a chance to take a seat. “I think I figured out the problem with Red Dragon yesterday. Sit down and watch this.”

  The conference room had a large flat-screen monitor that was connected to Kell’s desk computer. They used it for making presentations. Harrington sat down as the screen came alive with the operating system, to be immediately replaced by a Chinese Web site with a video embedded within. He recognized the architecture as that of the Bund. In the center of the picture was a man in a leather jacket with long blond hair, viewed from the rear. He started to get a sick feeling. Kell set it in motion.

  The man was walking along the Bund, with the camera slightly behind him and then moving up to the side. It was definitely Pete Harrington, striding along and staring straight ahead with a purposeful air. If he’d suddenly turned to the camera and started singing, it could have been a music video from fifteen years ago. The cameraman said words that sounded like “Pete Harrington” in a slurred English, then muttered something in Chinese. A platoon of Chinese ideograms appeared at the bottom of the photo, then faded out.

  Kell translated: “That says, ‘American musician Pete Harrington.’” The financier started to speak, but Kell raised his hand. “Keep watching. It gets better.”

  He knew what he was going to see. The rock star walked on as the camera’s point of view slipped up in front of him, then to his side again, then behind him, filming all the while. The musician seemed to spot something, and his step wavered; then he stopped for a few seconds before continuing on at a slightly slower pace. Now a little knot of three men became visible in patches between other pedestrians. A second crowd of Chinese characters appeared on the screen, and they too disappeared.