Long Way Down

by Michael Sears

“I can finesse when need be. I’m multitalented that way.” I would have Virgil make the call to Ward and the lawyer. “Anyone else? Competitors? Jealous family members? Jilted ex-lovers?”

  “I’m quite serious about the Chinese. You should look into that connection.”

  “Okay, but I might start with your wife.”

  He opened his mouth as though to object, then closed it and sat staring at me blankly.

  “Can I reach her here?” I asked.

  He snapped out of whatever reveries had caught him. “At the house? No. She’ll be at our place in the city.” He gave me the number. “Let me walk you out,” he said, standing.

  His mood had changed when I mentioned the wife. He was no longer as confident. He had gone from the assured CEO to the beleaguered husband.

  We were shaking hands in the parking lot when he suddenly shook off the change in mood. “Do you have a minute? Let me show you something. May I?”

  I had plenty of work to do and not much time to do it, but a minute or ten wouldn’t make a difference.

  “Lead on.”

  We walked up through the rhododendrons, the curled brown leaves rattling in the wind and sounding like a wooden waterfall. I was cold already, but Haley didn’t seem to notice it, though he was wearing no more than his suit.

  “I was late getting back this morning. Checking my lobster pots and trolling for whatever fish are still around this time of year.”

  Nothing on the Internet had hinted that he had a hobby of any kind.

  “I’m surprised. I didn’t see you as a fisherman.”

  “I grew up dirt-poor in Georgetown, South Carolina. You either fished or worked at the paper mill. Or went hungry.”

  The stables were just to our right. From this perspective I could see they were empty and needed work. The white paint was flaking badly in spots and the outdoor riding ring was partially covered with bare brown weeds. We kept walking.

  The house was both arrogant and pitiful. Arrogant in size and with all the Gold Coast love of over-ornamentation, but pitiful in that it failed so abysmally at conveying any sense of beauty or grandeur. The path we were on would lead us directly to the front door. I wasn’t interested in a house tour.

  Haley must have sensed my reluctance. “Almost there. We’ll take a right up here around the hedge.”

  I followed him and found myself in a low-walled garden in back of the house. The flower beds were all piled with mulch and only the brown stumps of rosebushes along the stone wall gave any indication of what this area would look like in early summer. At the end of the garden was all of Long Island Sound.

  Water views and wealth are inextricably bound and will be so even after the oceans rise twenty-five feet and turn Manhattan into a twenty-first-century version of Venice. Virgil’s mother lived in a castle with a view of Newport Harbor. Every multimillionaire on Wall Street had to have a water view, if only at the summerhouse, and every lowly intern and trading assistant dreamed of getting there one day. But few had dreamed this big.

  Beyond the wall was a steep cliff of clay and rock, pushed here by the Wisconsin glacier of the last ice age that had scraped away everything in its path down to bedrock before being defeated by warming weather, gravity, or friction. The glacier melted and left the Sound.

  And from that garden, I felt like I could see all of it. Far to the west was Manhattan, the towers looking like sparkling crystals in the afternoon sun. A lighthouse, which must have been miles away, looked like a toy replica. Across the water I could see the hedge fund mansions in Greenwich, the soaring bastions of banking in Stamford, and in the distance, the towers of the power plant at Bridgeport. To the east, water stretched to the horizon, giving the illusion of infinity. It was impossible that such a view belonged to one family alone.

  “Is this the highest point on Long Island?”

  “No. Not even close. It’s not even the tallest point on the North Shore.”

  “Why isn’t this a national park?”

  “It may yet get there. But come over here. I want to show you my farm.”

  It was too odd to question. I followed him to a set of steps that led down to a rocky beach in a set of switchbacks along the cliff. Far below us, a rock jetty stuck out from the beach for sixty or seventy feet into the Sound. I made the mistake of looking straight down and felt my equilibrium shift. The ground was very far away and there was very little between me and it.

  “Right out there,” Haley said, pointing at the water a quarter mile or so offshore.

  I looked, but I didn’t know what I was looking for.

  “See that row of white dots on the water? There and there and there.”

  Then I did see them. “Okay. Sure.” I had no idea what they meant or why I was supposed to be impressed, but Haley was certainly excited by them.

  “Those are my pots. My lobster pots. That’s where I was this morning.”

  He went on about conch and black sea bass and winter flounder with as much enthusiasm as the Kid talking about muscle cars. I tried to maintain a pretense of interest. The wind coming across that cold water was going right through my camel’s hair overcoat. I was cold.

  “You go out on a boat in this weather and haul up lobster traps? For fun?” I gave up on all pretense.

  He laughed like a little kid. “It is fun.”

  “Do you catch anything?”

  He laughed again, this time ruefully. “Not much. I’m probably not very good at this. But when I’m on the boat, I’m not thinking about balance sheets, or failed algae batches, or Chinese saboteurs, or . . .”

  “I hear you.” Or a wife who prefers to live twenty miles away, or an SEC investigation, or who might be stabbing you in the back. “I don’t know how you do it, out here in just a jacket, but I’m dying.”

  “Of course. Of course. We’ll head back and I’ll let you go.”

  Haley pushed the pace back to the parking lot, and by the time we got there I was beginning to think that I would live.

  “I’ll be in touch,” I said. “Anything else that comes to mind, please let me know right away. I’ll report back to Virgil, but with your permission, I can also keep your lawyer in the loop.”

  “Right. Give him a call,” he said airily. He was back in his denial phase.

  “By the way,” I said, “where do you keep the boat? I didn’t see it down there.”

  “Oh, no. There’s no real dockage here. I keep it in the cove just down the coast. Come back in warmer weather and I’ll take you out. We’ll head out east for bonito. Good fighting fish on light tackle.”

  The wind was making the birches next to the lab groan and complain as they swayed. I hustled into the car and put the heater on high. It blasted cold air for a minute, then neutral, and, finally, blessed heat. I turned the fan down and started the long drive home.

  10

  There was an accident in the left lane just before the Cross Island Parkway, and the Long Island Expressway had become a parking lot. I was close enough to see the flashing lights up ahead, which was also close enough to see that the only lane where traffic was moving was the exit lane to the Parkway. I pulled out my phone, fitted in my earbuds, and made a call—almost hands-free.

  Straight to voicemail. “Hi. This is Fred Krebs. I’m not available right now, but if you leave your name, number, and a brief message, I will be sure to get back to you.”

  “Hello, Spud. Sorry. Fred.” Spud had been a junior trader who had helped me out in the past, but now that he was in law school—at Yale—he was trying to lose the old nickname. “So by now you’ve guessed who this is. I thought you might need to make a few bucks to buy Christmas presents. Give me a call.”

  I tried Skeli.

  “Hi. What’s up?” She sounded busy.

  “Are you busy?” I asked.

  She let out a breath. “I’m always busy these
days, aren’t I? I didn’t use to be, you know. Or at least it felt less busy. I miss it, sometimes. What are you doing?”

  “I’m stuck in traffic on the LIE.”

  She laughed a great whoop. “Your worst nightmare. And you called me. What a romantic you are.” She gave a soft chuckle. “Poor baby.”

  “Thanks. I didn’t know I needed that until you said it.”

  “Call when you get back into the city. I need a break from all this. A long relaxing session with you.”

  “I’ll try and fit you in,” I said.

  “I love it when you talk dirty to me.” She disconnected.

  A Chrysler 300 in the middle lane suddenly put on its blinker and attempted to force its way into the left-hand lane. As no cars were moving, he didn’t get very far, though he now managed to block two lanes rather than one.

  My phone rang. Spud.

  “Hey! Thanks for getting back to me so quick.”

  “I only called to say I can’t help. I’m buried.”

  “I don’t need much. I think.”

  “It’s finals. Law school finals. People regularly take their own lives in all kinds of dramatic and mundane ways to avoid what I am going through.”

  “Come on. By this time you either know it or you don’t.”

  “I want to make law review.”

  “Five minutes? Less, if you stop trying to put me off.”

  “You always try to cheese me with that ‘five minutes.’ It is never five minutes.”

  “I will wire you the money the minute I hang up,” I said.

  “Banking by phone?” He laughed. “Are you finally embracing technology? Leaping blindly into the second decade of the twenty-first century?”

  “Are you in or out?”

  “Shoot,” he said.

  “The client is accused of shorting stock in his own company just before the release of some troubling news. The news wasn’t really all that awful, but the stock dipped almost ten percent that day and didn’t recover for almost a month. He bought back at the lows and made himself a couple hundred grand.”

  “That’s it? He risks losing everything over two hundred grand?”

  “I have considered that. Let’s say he didn’t think he would get caught,” I said.

  “The SEC combs through every trade looking for just that kind of thing.”

  “The trades were done through an offshore account.”

  “That makes it slightly harder,” he said. “They’ll go after the bank. They’ll get the records.”

  “They did. His name is on the account.”

  “Then tell him to cut a deal.”

  I gave a sigh. “I did. He says he didn’t do it. He says he was set up. My question to you is this. Could he be telling the truth? Is it possible?”

  “Sure, it’s possible.” He sounded as though he would need a lot of convincing.

  “But unlikely.”

  “Yeah. Kinda.”

  “How would you do it?”

  “That’s way beyond my skill set. You’d either need to bribe someone, or hack directly into the bank’s system. Or both. Either way, I wouldn’t know who or how.”

  I could see a tow truck pull away with a wreck on the bed. The flashing red and blue lights began to break up. The middle lane began to move. Now a Prius tried to muscle its way into that lane. Traffic stopped again. Horns started blaring around me.

  “Really, Jason. Save your money on this one. I know someone you might try, but it’s not me. He’s more than a little odd, but he’s a genius. Guaranteed. He was a TA when I was an undergrad. He left before he finished his thesis. I’ll text you his contact info.”

  “Thanks, Fred. ’Luck on your finals.”

  I clicked off and focused on the milling traffic. Once again they were all jockeying for position that might possibly shave tenths of a second off their commute. The last accident had just been cleared—in front of our eyes—and the madness began again immediately.

  11

  I hated going to the gym. I hated gyms. And I held a deep suspicion of those who claimed to like them. Their priorities were askew. In my trading days, Case Securities had offered executives a heavily discounted membership package to a gym in the basement of the building. I paid every month and never went. Later, when the fraud that I was running was taking up all of my waking time, I would go downstairs in the evening for a steam, a shower, and a nap on one of the massage tables before coming back up to watch the markets open in Tokyo. I never once lifted a weight. I never ran on a treadmill or biked in place. I hated gyms.

  However, as a defense against boredom more than anything else, I had picked up the habit while in prison. The weight room was a no-combat zone. None of the prisoners wanted to lose gym privileges. My shoulders and chest filled out, my waist shrank. I was no bodybuilder, but I progressed and benefited.

  I had not lifted a weight in the sixteen months since I came home. I ran, though I would never be competitive, but that did nothing to maintain the upper body muscles I had developed.

  Skeli was right. It was time.

  Tuesday morning. Roger told me there was an old Yiddish saying about luck coming with new ventures begun on a Tuesday. I had no idea if there really was such a saying or how Roger would know, but after dropping the Kid at school, I had nowhere else I had to be until early afternoon. I walked down to the West Side Y. There were plenty of gyms in the city, but the Y was an easy choice. No one I knew would be there.

  I went on a tour of the facilities, signed forms, submitted my credit card, and engaged the services of a personal trainer for ten sessions. Having done all that, I thought I could reward myself by skipping a workout, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to look Skeli in the eye.

  I did a quick two miles on the track that ran around the second-floor balcony in the main gym, the sound of barbells clanging occasionally breaking through my usual running trance. Then, still pouring sweat, I went downstairs and began lifting.

  The rhythms came back. I was not lifting the same weight as I had in prison; I wasn’t even trying to. But I found that I wasn’t quite as soft as I had imagined. I focused on my routine, free weights only. The machines all looked complicated. I’d let the trainer break me in when we finally met. I concentrated on not hurting myself.

  There was a mirror I was trying to avoid looking at on the far side of the room, but every time I came up from a barbell squat I caught sight of a scowling man. I knew that scowl. It had been my normal face for years while I traded currencies. But I thought I had begun to lose it in the months after my release from prison. It was back.

  I added ten pounds to each end of the bar and did a dozen dead lifts. I didn’t have to focus as hard on my balance and could afford to look away from the mirror. I finished the dead lifts and paused. Was I still scowling? Did I scowl only while lifting? I looked at the mirror. I was scowling.

  The Kid didn’t like my scowl. He didn’t like my smile much, either. He responded best when I assumed a relaxed implacability. Skeli didn’t seem to mind. Or maybe I just scowled a lot less when she was around.

  I did six clean and press before I realized I still had the extra weight on the barbell. I was lifting far too much over my head. I should have had a spotter. This was only twenty pounds less than I’d been pressing at my peak. It was nuts. And exhilarating.

  The seventh was a strain. Eight caused me to burst out with sweat again. I could feel it running in rivers down my back. At nine, my arms began to shake. I pushed through. I looked in the mirror. I was still scowling ferociously.

  Ten. I could quit there. Pretend that I did reps of ten rather than twelve. But I couldn’t. The old lifer who ran the weight room in prison had told me that only wusses and punks did reps of ten. My body almost stalled on eleven. My right arm extended, but my left remained bent. My left had always been weaker. I tried to breathe, but I
was already straining too hard, too tight across the chest. I made another push and my arm finally went straight. I released and almost lost control as the bar came back down. It occurred to me that Skeli would be really pissed if I strained my back my first day in the gym.

  I blew air out and gasped it back in. Three times. Forcing oxygen back into my blood. Grab. Clean. Up and slow press. Hold. Three count and down. Done. A full dozen.

  I was no longer scowling. I was smiling. If that’s what it took to get a smile on my face, I thought, we were all going to have to settle for a rare small grin.

  Then I saw her. She was standing behind me and off to one side. If I had turned my head even slightly, I would have seen her earlier. She was watching me, but from her angle she wouldn’t be able to see that I could see her in the mirror. She was worth watching.

  I guessed her to be in her early twenties, half my age. Much too young. Young enough that any sexual thoughts on my part would be self-censored on the basis of general creepiness. But I was looking. Admiring. A few inches shy of six feet. She wore a white leotard, gym shorts, and pink sneakers with flaming red laces. Her bosom was just shy of startling. Hips an inch too small for perfection. Her face was, of course, beautiful, but not the kind of beauty that anyone with a big enough checkbook can get these days. She had character. There was intelligence there. Honey-blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. I don’t particularly like the ponytail look, but she was at the gym. Working out. I could make allowances. She was still looking at me.

  I checked my smile in the mirror. Still there. She was approaching. I sucked in my gut.

  “You’re Jason Stafford, aren’t you?” she said. If the smile had had any effect on her, it didn’t show.

  “I know we haven’t met before,” I said. “Believe me, I would remember.”

  “Savannah. Savannah Lake. Roger pointed you out the other day. Roger? ‘Jacques’?”

  “I know Roger,” I said. Jacques-Emo was his stage name.

  “I’m his assistant. In his act. He’s a clown.”

  “I know. I’ve known Roger for years. He has phenomenal taste in assistants.” Skeli had been his assistant when we first met. Roger had introduced us.