The 500: A Novel

by Matthew Quirk

  What could I do? Walk into the middle of the Met Club, publicly accuse Gould of taking bribes, then politely explain to the gathered dignitaries, Davies, and various thick-necked representatives of the Metro Police that I’d come across my circumstantial evidence by stalking the guy and breaking into and out of these hallowed halls? Davies had me the most worried. He’d offered me decency and I’d repaid him with crime. Just another con man. It was in my blood. Any shot I had at an honest life was a gross mistake, soon to be corrected.

  I tried to follow his and Gould’s conversation from their gestures and watched it segue from chitchat to substance, as Davies moved a little closer, over the table. I was watching for the ask. The yes-or-no that would decide my fate. I saw Davies lean in farther, then sit back. Then nothing. Gould looked pensive. Neither spoke. Was that it?

  I was watching so intently that it took me a while to notice that two of the cops were now staring at me. When I looked back at the table I saw Gould make a pained expression and raise his hands. It was clear enough. He was saying no. Just like that, the decent life slipped away.

  So what the hell did I have to lose?

  Three cops were now having an earnest discussion, their eyes fixed on me. I fished out my cell phone and called the Metropolitan Club. A moment later the phone started ringing at the reception desk. I told them I was the assistant to Gould’s boss, and that the call was urgent. Then I watched the steward make his way across the checker tiles to interrupt Davies and Gould’s meeting.

  As Gould walked out of the dining room, I walked in, fast, past the cops. One broke away and stayed between me and the exit. As I approached his table, Davies seemed oddly unsurprised to see me there.

  I leaned over and whispered, “Gould is on the take,” then showed him a picture I had shot with my phone: the money stacked in the duffel. Davies didn’t ask any questions. His demeanor didn’t change.

  “Go,” he whispered. A police officer saw to that. He gripped my arm in a very persuasive come-along hold and steered me back toward the library, where the other police and the steward were waiting.

  “Were you on the premises here yesterday, son?” a plainclothes detective, presumably running the show, asked me.

  “Yes.”

  “Why don’t you wait right here with us.”

  The cops asked the steward for Admiral Cassidy’s number. More patrol cars pulled up outside, lights flashing. Two officers flanked me. I was fucked. My mind flashed forward through every step—handcuffs, squad car, the holding cell with the center-stage toilet and the crowd of DC’s funkiest lowlifes, the interviews, the shitty coffee, the worthless public defender, the arraignment: that judge looking down at me like the one ten years before had. But this time there were no second chances. They’d finally recognize me for what I was, a hustler in a suit I didn’t pay for. I couldn’t even see around the wall of blue polyester cop uniform to find out what happened between Davies and Gould.

  “Can I help you gentlemen?” It was Davies, standing behind me. The steward withered under his stare. The cops backed off a few inches.

  “You know this man?” one asked.

  “Of course,” Davies said. “He is an associate at my firm. One of my best.”

  “And he is an acquaintance of Admiral Cassidy?”

  “I had hoped to introduce them yesterday, but I was held up at the office. I was thinking of putting this gentleman up for membership here at the Met. Anup, this is Michael Ford.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” the steward said. I could see he was bristling behind his practiced smile.

  “Likewise,” I said.

  “Now, what is this all about?” Davies asked.

  “Just a misunderstanding, sir,” the steward replied.

  “Then you gentlemen will excuse us?”

  “Of course,” the detective said.

  Davies’s manner was obliging, but he clearly commanded the scene. I finally had a chance to look into the dining room. Gould still sat at the table, staring down at his coffee like it would tell him the future. He looked sucker-punched.

  “It’d probably be best for you to leave,” Davies whispered to me. He had this sphinxy look I couldn’t peg. I still wasn’t sure if my cat-burglar act had saved the day or detonated my career. Maybe he’d fobbed off the cops so he could mete out the punishment himself. Just before I left, he told me, “Be in my office at three.”

  His suite was at the end of the seemingly endless executive corridor. I knew I was being a little dramatic, but I couldn’t shake the image I’d seen in a dozen movies of the final stroll down death row. He kept me waiting in a little hallway outside his office until 3:20. I’d been up for roughly thirty-four hours; fatigue weighed down my body like a dentist’s lead blanket. Finally, I saw Davies striding up the hallway. He walked straight into his office and beckoned me in behind him. I stood as he stopped beside his desk.

  He pinned me for a while with that same inscrutable look then took something out of his pocket and held it up between his thumb and index finger. It was a wood screw, and it looked awfully familiar. I’d twisted in enough to secure the locker’s back panel, and I’d covered the empty holes with the wood trim. I guess I’d forgotten one.

  “Play any squash recently, Ford?”

  I’d keep my mouth shut until I could see where this was going. Davies stood twisting the screw slowly between his thumb and finger, then he tossed it up in the air. I snatched it a foot in front of my chest.

  “Gould said yes,” Davies said.

  “And the police?”

  Davies waved it away. “And don’t worry about the admiral. He’s getting a little soft, introduces himself to his own reflection.”

  “I apologize for—”

  “Forget about it. Your exploits may have been a little bit more cowboy than I’d have chosen, but the important thing is we got to yes. Fifty-eight million dollars.”

  “Fifty-eight?”

  He nodded. “I signed on a few more parties this week.”

  “And what happens to Gould? Do you go to the inspector general at Commerce, the police?”

  Davies shook his head. “Ninety-nine percent of these cases get buried. If he had a bunch of body parts in there, it would be a different story, but the sad fact is a hundred-twenty-grand sweetener is nickel-and-dime stuff in this town. Though I’m glad you caught it.”

  “So how did you bring him around? Just threaten to out him? Is it like…” I tried to find a nice word for it.

  “Blackmail?” Davies said.

  “No, sir, I didn’t mean to suggest—”

  “You haven’t hurt my feelings,” Davies said, laughing a bit. “Blackmail is a little too crude a term to describe the work we perform. Though it would be a refreshingly direct alternative. Picture it. You show a guy a photo of himself ass-end up in a motel with some pross, and say, ‘Campaign finance reform now, or it’s curtains for you.’ ”

  Davies considered that for a moment. “It has a certain straightforward appeal, I’ll admit. But no. Gould is a smart guy. You need only say you’ve heard he may have gotten in over his head. You say you might be able to help him avoid any unpleasantness. Usually you don’t even have to say that much. Suddenly he’s all ears, suddenly so agreeable. People don’t acquire power by being dim, at least not when it comes to their own self-interest.

  “It’s win-win,” Davies went on. “Typically the guy knocks off whatever the hell he was up to faster and more certainly than any ethics investigation could ever have gotten him to. Meanwhile we advance the policies we believe in. We make the best of their bad behavior.”

  I stood by the window, considering that little wood screw between my still-raw fingertips.

  “You were thrown into the hardball pretty suddenly, Mike. You never see it in the papers. But that’s how things are done. I think you’re cut out for it.”

  It didn’t feel right. Maybe it was that strange reluctance you get when you’re offered something you’ve wanted so badly for so long:
you’re scared to take it once it’s yours. Or maybe I just wanted things black and white. I wanted that decent life without a shred of gray. And now I’d found out that what I was running toward was tangled up with what I was running from.

  “There’s something you should know, sir. Full disclosure. About that trouble—”

  “I know everything I need to know about you, Mike. I hired you—well, not because of it, but because of the good you can do with it.”

  He stuck his hand out. “Are you still on board?”

  I could see the capital’s skyline through the window behind him. The kingdoms of the world and all their glory.

  “Yes, sir,” I said. We shook.

  “Good,” he said. “Now call me Henry. The way you say sir makes me feel like a goddamn drill instructor. And tell the real estate agent you’ll take that place on Ingleside Terrace.”

  The house in Mount Pleasant. “I may hold off for now, find somewhere with a little lower rent, sock away some more savings.”

  “Rent?” Davies said. “No. If you like it, buy it. Understand this, Mike. You never have to worry about money again.”

  “Well, I do have some past debts, school loans. Maybe now isn’t—”

  He slid a folder across the desk. “The civil case against Crenshaw Collection Services. Ready to file. The criminal complaint will be set by Wednesday. We’re going to tear their spines out.”

  He led me to a pair of French doors before I could even register what was happening.

  “Now, Marcus will be your mentor, but I thought I’d introduce you to the rest of the gang.”

  He opened the doors into a conference room that put the Met Club to shame. The principals—a gallery of the weightiest heavies of them all—were waiting for me.

  “Everyone, I’m pleased to present Michael Ford, our newest senior associate.”

  They applauded, then passed me around, shaking my hand and clapping my shoulder. I’d been at Davies for four months—May through August. Someone told me it was the shortest time to promotion in the history of the Davies Group.

  Davies raised his hand, and the room quieted. “Now let’s get out of here,” he said in his half whisper. “I’ll see you all at Brasserie Beck in half an hour. We have the back room.”

  The principals made their last congratulations as they ambled out. Davies walked me down to the second floor to a beautiful office, as cozy as an Oxford library.

  “We’ll move you up here on Monday.”

  He caught me measuring the distance, not more than fifty feet, to Annie Clark’s door. He gave me the faintest smile but didn’t say a word. The guy really did know his levers.

  “What do you want, Mike? Name it.”

  I blanked. I had everything I’d been gunning for. A decent life, a good job, respect. And more, something I never thought possible. Going after Gould had thrilled me in a way I’d missed for years, ever since I’d given up hustling. And Davies was happy with it, the honest work and the not-so-honest habits I could never shake. I could be the man I wanted and not have to hide where I’d come from.

  “I’m happy, sir. Really. This is all too much.”

  “Anything,” he urged me. This wasn’t some inspirational exercise, I realized. He was serious. I was silent for a minute, daring to take him at his word.

  “I don’t know if this is the right…” I trailed off. He probably thought I was calculating a doable ask: a Benz SLK350, a private bathroom. But the only thing I could think of to ask for was trickier than that, because I’d been covering it up for so long, and because, to tell a hard truth, some part of me didn’t even want it.

  “My father,” I said. “He…” I trailed off.

  “I know about your father.”

  “He has a parole hearing coming up. He has sixteen years in, and eight left. Can you help get him out?”

  “I’ll do everything I can, Mike. Everything.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  IN THE WEEKS after my promotion, I kept being assigned to cases that Annie Clark was also working on. I began to wonder if Henry Davies was somehow behind our being thrown together so often, though it was never exactly seven minutes in heaven.

  We were both now senior associates, but she was very clearly the boss on every project. She’d already been at the firm for four years, and rumor had it she was on track to be the first female partner. She clocked a lot of one-on-one time with Henry, the ultimate sign of clout around the office.

  Davies Group had a macho, competitive streak that reminded me of those Harvard Law seminar rooms. Annie could more than hold her own against the boys. She did it with poise, a dry humor, and a toughness that, coming from a woman so graceful, was especially lethal. The downside, for my purposes, was that she wasn’t someone you could just flirt with. She scared the shit out of most guys.

  Working the kind of hours we worked, we developed a rapport and grew to be good friends around the office. Every so often, sitting at the end of an empty conference room at eleven at night, going over the final revisions on a report for a client, I would pick up on a shared vibe: a warmth from her that made it seem like the most natural thing for me to slide closer to her, to touch her arm, her shoulder, stare into her eyes. I got the strangest feeling that she was watching, testing me, to see how bold I really was.

  I could easily have been deluding myself, however. I had a serious crush going. And it seemed a uniquely bad idea, now that I’d clawed my way into the good life here at Davies, to make a pass at a woman who, while not quite my boss, was definitely a higher-up and close to Davies himself. And I certainly wasn’t going to pull anything in the circumstances we usually found ourselves: sweating a tight deadline surrounded by colleagues.

  My schemer’s mind was always revving red, contriving ways to throw us together, but she caught me first. Davies Group had a gym in the basement. You opened an unassuming door in a back corner by the parking garage and then found yourself in a twelve-thousand-square-foot fitness utopia: rows of gleaming new equipment, flat-screen TVs, and workout clothes with the Davies Group logo carefully folded and waiting for you.

  Around midnight or one a.m., after the cleaning folks had left and the whole building was empty, when you’re still working and starting to get the crazies from staring too long at a computer, that gym was heaven.

  I was down there one night, and with sixteen hours of bottled-up energy to burn off, I guess I was going a little overboard, doing rounds of treadmill sprints, pull-ups, push-ups, and thrusters, sweating and panting and blasting my iPod. In the course of trying not to retch or let the weights fall on my head, I perhaps forgot myself. In my entire time at Davies, I think I’d seen one other person in there that late. I mean, what kind of maniac uses the office gym at one in the morning?

  Excuses, excuses for the inexcusable. A certain song, let’s say “Respect” by Aretha Franklin, came on shuffle on my iPod, and I may have been belting it out at the top of my lungs. And maybe dancing a little between sets. I’ll blame the endorphins.

  Regardless, just as I was hitting my crescendo during the chorus, I did a little half turn and found Annie, faking innocence, on the elliptical eight feet away. This was the second time she’d sneaked up on me. I stopped dead in the middle of the “sock it to me”s.

  She performed a very polite golf clap.

  “Oh boy,” I said.

  She walked toward me and looked at the screen of my iPod. “Aretha, huh? I didn’t quite peg you for that.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “That?”

  “Soulful.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Not like that,” she protested. “I mean, it’s not exactly a sound track I had imagined when I saw you down here, doing…what was that thing on the ground?”

  It was called a burpee, though I wasn’t about to say that to Annie. “Nothing,” I said. “I happen to have a lot of soul.”

  “I could tell. Snazzy moves.”

  “Thanks.” Deep breath. No time like the present. “Hey, why don’t w
e get together outside of work. What are you up to this weekend?”

  She frowned. “I’m busy.”

  Damage-control time. “That’s cool. We should hang out sometime, though.”

  “I’d really like that,” she said, and she draped her towel around her neck. “Actually, do you like hiking?”

  If she had asked if I were into metal detecting, I’d have said yes. “Oh yeah.”

  “Some friends of mine and I are heading out to the country on Saturday, if you’re free.”

  And that’s how I found myself scrambling hands and feet over granite boulders in Shenandoah National Park, with Annie chugging along ahead of me in hiking boots and knee-high wool socks that gave her a distinctly Swiss vibe. Somehow, when I’d pictured her off the clock, I had conjured up scenes of her as a high-society dame in a period drama, waltzing. So imagine my surprise when Annie Clark—blue blood in her veins, Yale on her résumé—led me to a swimming hole in moonshine country.

  Her friends said that the water would be too cold for swimming, but she shrugged and looked at me. I didn’t care if it was the North Sea. We headed down, just the two of us.

  A cascade dropped forty feet through a gorge surrounded by old-growth forest. It was early September, still hot, but the water was ice-cold. Annie took off her shoes and socks and long-sleeved shirt and dropped in first. Seeing her glide through the clear water and then lie out on the bank in her sports bra and hiking shorts, patches of sunlight moving across her smooth skin as the wind moved the branches overhead—to this day that memory stops my heart. I stripped down to my shorts and jumped in. If she were a Siren, I’d have gladly drowned trying to get to her. I didn’t think she’d actually call me out on that, though.

  “You want to go under the falls?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I said. I managed to restrain my first answer: Yes, God, yes.

  “It can be a little scary,” she said.

  “I think I’ll be okay.” I mean, really, what could this sheltered little pixie have in store that could possibly scare me?