The Promotion

by Nan Dale

  Before he went to bed, he had to make one more call. “Hello, it’s me, Aaron.”

  “Did he fall for it?” said the voice on the other end.

  “Newp. I fell for it—literally. I am officially done with this craziness. Find another person to do your dirty work!” He then hung up and passed out.

  Chapter 15

  John finished reading the last page of the draft red herring (the final pricing document) that would be going out to investors this morning. He sent an email to the team. “We are good to go. OK to price!” As he contemplated the recent events, he smiled to himself.

  Aaron is likely done playing games. I don’t believe for one minute that he is under ransom. He is way too smart for that. So what was Aaron’s motive? It couldn’t be money, as Aaron was pretty affluent. So maybe a challenge? Or for fun? Or perhaps Aron was simply jealous of him? John could see why Aaron would want to screw up his partnership. To Aaron, John’s life was perfect. Married with two children, and now a partner at Silicon Alley. Jessica was probably right. Their friendship always was a competitive one.

  John picked up his phone; this couldn’t be done in writing. “Paul, I need a favor. Just need a simple yes or no. Has there been a margin call on the real estate company?”

  “No,” Paul said. “Company is flush with cash and liquid.”

  John put the phone down. As a partner of the firm, Aaron would know how much money the firm had at any point in time. He knew how much John needed to put into the partnership and was trying to sabotage that investment.

  Aaron had to be working with someone inside Silicon Alley to bring down his partnership. Still, he felt confident that he had just taken Aaron out of the game, so he would no longer be a problem.

  But whom was he working for?

  John searched for Aaron’s real estate firm online and looked at all the images. About twenty had come up in the Google search. One image in particular caught his eye. It showed a group of people holding drinks. He instantly recognized Aaron. He saved the image on his drive and then magnified it. As he looked closer, he saw a second familiar face: Larry Davis. The second founder and managing partner at the firm, whom he had had dinner with last night. So Aaron was working with Larry for laughs, and Larry really did not want him to make partner. The only question was why.

  It was eight a.m. John headed downstairs to meet Patrick for breakfast. This ought to be good. During this breakfast, John wanted to learn, what was Patrick’s relationship with Ruth? Was his relationship with Vanessa real or was he using it to cover up something else? Who is the real Patrick? What is he hiding? Why is Ruth sending him money?

  At eight fifteen a.m., Patrick was a no-show. John checked his text messages. Ruth had sent him one at seven thirty, saying that Vanessa was freaking out since Patrick had been off-line since he left Montclair at seven p.m. last night. Apparently this was unusual, since they would Skype right before bedtime and then again first thing in the morning. John tried Patrick’s phone number. It went straight to voice mail.

  As he headed out, he got another text from Ruth. Would he mind heading over to Brooklyn Heights, 9 Pierrepont Street, apt 3D, and pressing the doorbell? Perhaps he had fallen ill.

  John was slightly annoyed at this request. Why couldn’t Vanessa do it? He did owe Ruth one, though, after leaving her in the dark about Aaron and then bolting to work. He knew that Aaron would not hurt her, but Ruth didn’t know that. She probably suspected it. He was due for an earful when he got home later. She was probably giving him a pass with the deal that he was working on.

  Reluctantly, he jumped into an Uber and took the FDR Drive down to the Brooklyn Bridge and off the Cadman Plaza exit. He jumped out of the car on the corner of Henry and Pierrepont.

  Patrick lived in an eight-story prewar building that was full of charm. There was no lobby, so John rang the buzzer. There was no answer. He waited and then rang it again. An elderly lady came out of the elevator and outside. John took the opportunity to go into the building. He pulled open the gates of a cage elevator, stepped in, closed the gates, and pressed the button to the third floor. Patrick’s apartment was directly outside the elevator. He knocked loudly on the door a few times and then gave up after five minutes. He had to head back to the city for his drug test. He took the stairs to the first floor and then exited the building from the back onto Love Lane. As he passed by the garbage cans, he noticed something leather slightly hidden under one of the blue cans. It was a wallet. He picked it up and opened it. There was an ID. He pulled it out. The picture on the ID was of Patrick, but his name was Patrick Yates, not Patrick Farley. Someone had either taken or kidnapped Patrick.

  Shortly after, John sent a text to Ruth and headed straight back to Midtown from Brooklyn for his drug test. He asked if it was possible for him to also take a sample for a paternity test. Two in one.

  The drug test was taken at a local lab. It was a five-panel urine test. Before he went into the bathroom, a heavyset woman called his name. He followed her into a room.

  “Hi, my name is Marjorie,” she said. “I would just like to confirm that you are here for a five-panel drug test.” John nodded. She continued, “First, let me double-check your pockets; they need to be empty. Good. This is the exam room. You can leave your pocketbook here and wash your hands in the sink.”

  John followed her instructions.

  “Perfect,” she said. “Here is the urine collection container. This way, please, we are heading to a restroom. Please note that the toilet is currently not working, but we would like to get you in and out. I will wait outside the restroom for you. All you have to do is pee in the cup.” John closed the door to the restroom and did the deed.

  He left the restroom and the nurse eyeballed the cup. “Good. Thank you. You may now wash your hands and take your belongings. The drug test is done. We will have your results in two days.”

  “I was told that I can also do my paternity test here as well,” said John.

  “Yes,” said Marjorie. “Please check back in with the receptionist, since that is separate and has not been ordered by your firm.”

  The paternity test was straightforward. The nurse just took a swab of his inside cheek. “The results should be available in two business days if you expedite it,” she told him. “We will work with the lab in California. Good luck!”

  He shared the information for the paternity test with Jessica via text.

  The deal had been priced by the time he got back into the office. There was a flutter of activity outside his office: the phones were ringing incessantly. A team of analysts and traders sat in the “bubble” which was what they called the working area outside his office. Each individual had two screens, one with market updates from Bloomberg and a second screen, with an excel spreadsheet with cash models or a pitchbook. A flat screen TV hung on the far wall, with news from CNBC. Analysts would occasionally look up from their screens to tune into the latest market-related stories.

  “How did we price?” John asked the head trader.

  “As expected, we sold all the senior notes, most of the mezz, and some of the equity,” the trader replied quickly, phone in hand. “I am on the phone with Aldrin. He wants in on the action.”

  John nodded and then headed back into his office, while closing the door behind him. He was finding it difficult to concentrate. Larry Davis. What beef did Larry have with him? And what hold did Larry have on Aaron? John was certain that Larry was this “visitor” that Aaron had spoken of.

  As the reels continued to turn, John reflected on his situation. He had a few dilemmas: Tell Ruth about Jess’s child or wait until the paternity test? Did the partners need to know that this was happening? What if he did have another child, and Aaron or Larry leaked the information to the press alongside the announcement of him as new partner? How would this affect the image of him and the firm? And what if he somehow failed the drug test? He was the father of two children (maybe three). What about Aaron and the sleeping pills? Could Aaron prove that
he’d drugged him? Would Ruth be on his side? No, John would hit back for Friday night if that was the case. He was pretty certain that Aaron would be backing down now. He had played his dirty game and won.

  And never mind that Ruth was sending large sums of money to his au pair’s fiancé, who happened to have had brunch at their house the previous day and then disappeared either last night or this morning, when he and the fiancé were scheduled to have breakfast. Did Aaron have something to do with Patrick’s disappearance or was this just coincidental?

  Those were too many high-stakes variables in less than seventy-two hours. Someone was playing a very dirty game. The partnership, his marriage, and a disappearance.

  John sat and closed his eyes for a second. He was typically quite good at prioritizing. There was one thing that he could sort out quickly. He picked up the phone and called Ruth.

  “Hi, Ruth. It’s me. I am headed back home. We really need to talk. I’ll explain when I get there. This is best handled in private.”

  “Hi, Barbara,” he said to his assistant. “Family emergency. Please let everyone know that I will be unavailable for the next few hours. Only put through calls that are absolutely essential.”

  Part II

  Chapter 16

  Larry Davis sat in his office, watching John Beard as he headed out to the elevator. He looked flustered. Good. Mission accomplished. Things came easy to John, and it irritated Larry to no end. He was the teacher’s pet, the one who would be picked first for any of the sports teams, who’d sailed through high school and had acceptances from multiple universities. He was the antithesis of Larry.

  Larry was a city boy from a low-to-middle-income background. He grew up in New York City at a time when no one wanted to live there. Being the son of immigrant parents, he knew that education was the key to a life of financial independence. As a middle schooler living in downtown NYC, he used to watch the men in dark suits with briefcases walking in and out of the tall buildings around Wall Street.

  One day when he was nine and buying milk at a bodega with his neighbor Stanley, one of those suited men dropped his wallet on his way out of the store. Larry ran after him and said, “Sir, you dropped something.” The suited man was extremely grateful and offered to take them out for an afternoon treat as a thank-you. While they waited for their food to arrive at a local diner, he asked the boys what they would like to be when they grew up. Stanley said, “I would like to be a lawyer. I want to protect people from bad guys.”

  “What about you, my friend?” the suited man had asked him.

  Larry looked up at him and said, “I want to be just like you. I want to work in finance and make a lot of money.” At that moment, he committed his life to creating a successful career on Wall Street.

  “It’s not easy. You have to be prepared to work hard. But if you boys are willing to keep your eyes out for me, I can mentor you.”

  Fast-forward forty-five years, Larry Davis and Stanley Banks founded Silicon Alley. They had both worked on Wall Street in the heyday of the leveraged buyouts and made a living out of buying companies at a low price, growing them, and then selling them for a profit. And although Larry liked John Beard, admired his drive, his tenacity, his ability to put people at ease, and his exceptional ability to spot a great opportunity, he wanted to test him. Shake him up. He wasn’t sure whether John had the gumption to be ruthless when necessary. John seemed to play by the rules. But would he get his hands dirty? What he valued in a partner was an individual who was clean but who could bend the rules if necessary. As John approached his third anniversary at the firm, Larry, thirty years his senior, thought of how he could test John’s character. Larry found his opportunity when he met Aaron at a fund-raiser. It turned out that Aaron was looking to raise capital for his real estate fund, and Larry was looking for someone that was a personal friend of John’s that could stretch him beyond his comfort zone.

  Larry had a knack for reading people and, through his conversation with Aaron, learned two things. First, although Aaron and John were friends, Aaron was slightly envious of John and would love to see him fail, having always had the upper hand in the relationship. Second, with Aaron there was always a price. If he successfully carried out his end of the bargain, Larry would either invest in his fund or find him some worthy investors. Larry had spent a good deal of time looking at real estate and thought that Aaron’s new business venture in New Jersey had great potential. It would be a win-win for them both. Larry would get a chance to see whether John had the goods to be a Silicon Alley partner, and Aaron would get some of the capital for his project.

  Chapter 17

  A wave of nausea overcame Ruth as she sat silently by the window, waiting for John to get back from the city. She had been eating crackers all morning. Honestly, the last few weeks she had been so tired. Perhaps she was coming down with something … unless? Ruth dashed upstairs and headed for the medicine cabinet in her bathroom. She had one pregnancy test left. She had forgotten to take her birth control pills a few times and had been fine, but then again … She unwrapped the cover and pulled out the test, her fingers trembling slightly. She peed on the pregnancy stick and then put the stick on the side of the sink. It would take three minutes to get a reading. I am not going to stand here and torture myself for three minutes. She returned downstairs, took out a carton of chicken soup from the fridge, and started to heat it up on the stove. John would be hungry. And bread rolls? She looked in the pantry. Perfect. She put the rolls in the oven at a low heat, laid the table, and poured two glasses of water. OK, enough time had passed. The pregnancy test result would be ready now. She went upstairs and felt ill with anticipation as she pushed the bathroom door open. Closing her eyes, she said a silent prayer. Please God, whatever happens, I will be grateful. She opened her eyes. Two red lines. Two red lines! Just as she suspected, she was pregnant.

  John’s black BMW pulled into the driveway. She watched him park from the window upstairs and slowly get out of the car. She was sure that he would be ecstatic; he had always wanted a large family. She was the roadblock. However, the timing of the news wasn’t the best. He seemed angry about something and the last two days he had been acting very strangely. Since his dinner with the partners, he had become a little secretive. They hadn’t really had a chance to catch up properly over the weekend—having planned to spend Sunday evening together while the kids were at their grandparents’. The Aaron incident had botched things up and she couldn’t shake the feeling that John had orchestrated it. Visions of John’s text to Aaron the following morning, “CHECKMATE,” kept running through her mind. John did have something to do with it. Likely payback for something. Did John know about her past with Aaron?

  Ruth ran down the stairs and met John as soon as he walked through the door. He gave her a very long hug. This was the first time that John had left work in the middle of the day since she had known him. Something big was weighing on his mind. A wave of nausea came over her again. She ignored it.

  “Long night? How did the transaction price?” she asked, deliberately leaving out Aaron’s awkward departure that morning.

  “Better than expected, actually. We sold most of the equity.”

  “That’s terrific! But judging by the look on your face, celebrations are not in order?” Ruth was treading carefully.

  She took the soup off the stove and poured it into the bowls, before removing the bread rolls from the oven. John took a long sip of water while she carried the bowls and rolls to the kitchen island table. As soon as they sat down, he looked at Ruth.

  “This is good,” he said after a few mouthfuls of soup. “Ruth, do you recall I had a girlfriend in high school?” Ruth nodded, already bracing herself for the worst. What if he was having an affair and Aaron was blackmailing him?

  “Well, I had brunch with Aaron on Saturday and he told me that Jessica had moved back to the area about a year ago.”

  Phew, thought Ruth. He is not having an affair.

  “Jessica has a twenty
-one-year-old daughter,” he finished saying.

  Ruth returned a blank stare, not sure what he was getting at.

  “Ruth, we stopped dating about twenty-two years ago.”

  Ruth stopped chewing her bread roll and suddenly dropped her spoon. Did a truck just hit her from behind? She felt shocked, hijacked, and upset all at once. This is worse than an affair. A child would bind John and Jessica together forever.

  John had instinctively flown to her side, trying to protect her. She impulsively and unconsciously pushed him away as her eyes started to well with tears. She felt angry, betrayed, and upset. He stood by awkwardly, watching her. She needed time to process.

  “There is something else, though.”

  Ruth looked up.

  “Jessica is not sure who the father of her daughter is.”

  She was still in a state of shock.

  “Apparently she hooked up with one of the football players a few times towards the end of our relationship.”

  Ruth grabbed a tissue and blew her nose. She felt like something was stuck in her throat. The nausea returned; this time she didn’t try to hold it back. Within a few seconds, she was throwing up violently all over the floor. John ran to the sink and brought out a bucket for her to be sick in. She continued heaving uncontrollably into the bucket. There was so much. When she was done, he handed her a tissue.

  “Ruth, I would NEVER EVER hurt you. I am so sorry. This whole thing is awful. If I could get back in a time machine, I would. I feel so responsible for everything that is happening now.” John buried his head between his hands.