The Deal

by Adam Gittlin

  I took two steps into Tommy’s office, closed the door behind me then just stood there. I put my briefcase down at my side. The three of them stared at me in complete disbelief.

  “Jonah, where have you been?” asked Tommy.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I answered.

  “Are you all right?” followed Jake.

  It was odd to hear Jake speaking in such a caring, earnest tone. It was so unnatural. I looked him deadpan in the face.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Jonah,” Tommy continued, “it’s understandable to take time for—”

  I turned my eyes to Tommy.

  “I mean it, Tommy. I’m all right. Anyway it doesn’t matter now. I’m ready.”

  “Ready for what, Jonah?” he asked.

  Easy does it, I thought to myself. Stop thinking out loud.

  “Ready to take care of business.”

  Without a word, Perry stood up and walked over to me. Like Carolyn, she wrapped her arms around me as she fought tears. Jake and Tommy then followed. Within seconds the four of us were in a group hug like a rock band ready to take the stage. For a few moments I closed my eyes and absorbed their love as I hugged them back.

  “I appreciate it, guys,” I said. “Thank you.”

  I meant it. I knew they must have had so many questions, concerns.

  “We’re here, Jonah,” Perry said, her cheek still pressed against me. “Just know that we’re here.”

  After a few more seconds, as we started to break apart, Perry grabbed my hand so tight I could almost feel our palm prints interlock like zipper teeth. I turned my eyes toward her. I mentioned earlier that one way to gauge two people’s closeness is through what they’re willing to say to one another. Right there, perhaps more than ever, I was able to put my finger on what made Perry so special. Her ability to speak to me without ever having to say a word.

  We took our usual spots. The sunlight, hitting Tommy’s windows just right, filled the room. I took my jacket off and folded it over my knee as I sat back.

  “Let’s talk about the deals,” I said. “What’s happening?”

  Nothing. Just glances.

  “What?”

  “A couple of issues have come up,” Tommy said. “Nothing you need to worry about.”

  “What kind of issues? It’s only Monday afternoon,” I said. “What could have happened since we all closed up shop Friday night?”

  Again, nothing.

  “Asbestos,” Jake said.

  Our eyes all moved toward him. Perry’s and Tommy’s eyes were surprised, mine were appreciative.

  “Where?” I asked.

  He looked at Perry and Tommy who both seemed annoyed he had bothered to burden me with any of this. He sucked in a breath as he thought about answering then blew them off.

  “Two of the Slevin properties.”

  “Six of the seven properties were built in the forties and fifties. We talked about this. You said you asked the two old birds straight out.”

  “I did.”

  “And they said we could expect to find a bit.”

  “Traces, Jonah. They said we might come across traces.”

  “Okay, traces.”

  Then I got it.

  “How much was there?”

  “A lot more than we were expecting to—”

  “Jake—”

  “To the untrained eye, one might think they constructed the entire fucking building with it.”

  I was speechless. But more from the fact I was most likely responsible for the three pits in their stomachs than the information. I knew the feeling of a career-altering deal taking a potentially dreadful turn as well as anyone. On top of that, they were dealing with real-life issues that they weren’t even aware of on top of business. Again, courtesy of me.

  “Wow, that bad,” I said.

  “That bad. Coldwall, the environmental consulting firm, hit these two buildings over the weekend. They were numbers five and six of the seven, which means there’s even one left to go,” Jake explained. “I got the call about it around seven this morning.”

  “Is there any possibility of removing all of it?”

  “What’s the difference?” he continued.

  I knew there wasn’t one.

  “There’s no way for us to have it handled the way the government tells us we have to in the time frame we’ve been dealt, and we can’t be telling our clients to close on buildings that are rife with asbestos. It kind of—”

  “I think he gets it,” Tommy interjected.

  I wanted to open them up to my suspicions, but I couldn’t. Until I knew more, I needed everything to remain the same. For their sake.

  “It’s all right, Tommy,” I said. “Really. The way I see it, why hit the panic button when we don’t know all the facts? It’s not our job to know if and when the asbestos can be removed, it’s theirs. So tell them before they do anything else to give us a proposal for getting rid of it all as fast as possible.”

  “Jonah, you know as well as anyone how expensive it will be to tackle something like this. And either way there’s minimal chance they’ll even be—” Jake went on.

  Tommy cut him off.

  “We’re having them look at it right now, Jonah. I happen to agree with you.”

  “You said there were issues, plural. What else?”

  “A little something with Cantrol,” Perry pushed out.

  “How little?”

  “Let’s just say that Gerry’s team came across something of interest.”

  The strategy department of PCBL was comprised of different teams that evaluated potential deals. Gerry headed up our favorite group. Perry got to use them since they had the most experience with huge, trophy buildings.

  “What kind of something?” I prodded. “A lease-related something?”

  “Not exactly.”

  She had hoped to leave it at that.

  “Perry, then what?”

  “It’s nothing you need to worry about, Jonah. Really.”

  “Perry?”

  She looked at the other two. She was trying to protect me, which I didn’t deserve, from thinking my precious deal was coming apart at a time I was so vulnerable. I felt like such a dick. I swore to myself again, right then and there, that I was going to make it up to them. I promised, on my mother’s grave.

  “Perry, I need to have my head in this game right now. So please, tell me.”

  “A lawsuit, Jonah. A thirty-something couple and their two-year-old daughter. The parents died last summer when one of the elevators dropped thirty-three stories with them. Somehow the child survived.”

  “Holy shit,” I whispered. “Why then...how...why didn’t we—”

  “They didn’t come from much, so the surviving family agreed to keep it quiet if they were compensated fairly. Cantrol didn’t want to get dragged into court and into the news, so they agreed. The settlement is still being negotiated.”

  At the exact moment I entered my office and closed the door behind me, Carolyn came through on the intercom.

  “Line two, Jonah.”

  “Who is it?” I asked as I put my briefcase down on the floor behind my desk.

  “Andreu Zhamovsky.”

  Never before had one name stirred so many emotions. I wanted to blast him. I wanted to reach through the phone and choke him. I couldn’t, not if I was going to win and come out of this unscathed. Plus, the best chance I had for keeping my partners out of trouble was to keep Andreu happy and thinking he was still in control.

  “Put him through.”

  “Jonah?”

  It was a voice I had heard so many times in the past. That morning, sodden with deception, it sounded different. Or perhaps I was just hearing it different, gauging it with the bias of someone who’d been had.

  Almost.

  “Good afternoon, Andreu.”

  I looked at the platinum Lange 1 strapped to my wrist.

 
; “Or is it good evening?”

  “I’m so sorry to hear about Stan,” he jumped in. “What happened? Why didn’t you accept any of my calls this weekend?”

  I heard ice cubes clash through the phone as he took a sip of a drink.

  “I’ve had a lot to deal with. Thank God for your new real estate endeavors. It’s been the perfect excuse to keep my mind occupied.”

  “How can I help?”

  “By letting me stay focused on what we’re trying to achieve. I have enough shoulders to cry on.”

  “It’s okay to take a step back, Jonah.”

  The “buddy-buddy” thing had become very old, very fast. Business as usual, I told myself.

  React.

  “I appreciate the concern Andreu, but my focus is on the deal. Not just for you, for me. If a step back was what I needed I would have taken it. What I need is to forge ahead.”

  “Whatever you say, old friend. If that’s what you want.”

  “It is,” I shot back.

  “Then forge ahead it is. Please, the details.”

  Like he gave a fuck. I could have told him the details involved one of the buildings being a lair for some priests and young boys. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that he still thought I was in the dark. Which, on the contrary, was exactly where he now was.

  “The inspection teams are all rolling along smoothly with even less obstacles than expected.”

  “And this surprises you?”

  “Actually, it does. Things always come up like sloppy or inaccurate property management record keeping, environmental issues, unforeseen building system problems, undisclosed tenant and leasing issues, etcetera. Here we’ve been quite fortunate. Each potential deal only has minor hurdles.”

  “How minor?”

  “For example, the Park Avenue Slevin portfolio seems to be showing some signs of, how would I describe it, trace asbestos in certain areas.”

  “And this is minor?”

  “It is, happens all the time in buildings this old. So what we’ll do is work the cost of the asbestos abatement, or removal, into the overall purchase price, which will simply decrease the total value on a per square foot basis by a couple of cents. Then we’ll use these savings to handle the problem ourselves instead of tying up the transfer of ownership by having them deal with it. Piece of cake. After all, the goal here is to have all of them thinking we are ready to buy, even if it means handling some little, minimal risk annoyances on our own, is it not?”

  “It is, of course.”

  “At the Cantrol building one of the leases turns over, expires, earlier than we were initially told it would. Nothing more than shoddy record keeping. Are the differences in dates glaring enough that they could jeopardize the deal? Absolutely not. Again it is something that needs a bit more attention so we can account for it correctly in the final purchase price.”

  “But you’re not concerned. Correct?”

  “Correct. So I need you to give your friend Igor Larionov a call in the morning.”

  As far as I knew, Andreu still had no way of understanding I was completely dialed in. Therefore he had to continue playing the deal out on my terms until he had what he needed.

  “He needs to be aware that I may contact him shortly with regard to placing some more funds in escrow here in the States. For timing purposes.”

  “Not a problem.”

  Chapter 42

  My eyes observing from behind my sunglasses, my gun, once again, inside my jacket, I headed into the sun-drenched city. As much as I wanted to accept that I was as alone as I believed, the fact I had originally been onto Pangaea-Man tailing me, and rightly so, still had me freaked. I headed uptown on foot.

  I took out my cell phone. I had a laundry list of client calls to return from the previous three days, some relating to my father and others regarding the fact that, whether it was the point in their respective deal where Tommy’s expertise was needed or not, they were starting to feel as if I had disappeared. Just as I was about to return the first call, I stopped. Paranoia returned. I felt as if somewhere, just around a corner, trouble was waiting. Once I got to Madison Avenue an uptown bus pulled alongside of me. I reached into my pocket, grabbed my wallet and pulled out my Metrocard. Then I jumped on.

  The giant steel tube used for shuttling city types around the five boroughs like cattle began to move. I’ve always hated public transportation, but subways had often been my saving grace for making meetings. Midday traffic in Manhattan is nothing short of brutal. Because of this fact, coupled with my schedule, cabs or car services were often out of the question. That said, I had minimal experience with city buses.

  Very few people were speaking. All I could hear was the whirring of the engine. The huge vehicle bobbed slightly up and down like a boat moving along the water. The floor was dirty. The blue plastic seat under my ass felt hard, unforgiving. Again, just as I was about to start dialing, I stopped. The faces all around, paying no attention to me, had me captured. Behind each one, I thought, there was a different story from the next. I wondered if any of those stories were as fucked up as the one behind my own.

  In the rear was a pretty, young mother with her little boy. As I looked at them I remembered the day a couple of weeks earlier in Au Bon Pain with Perry. She was so enamored with the innocence of the beautiful little girl in the store that day. How had things gotten so crazy? So out of control? I wanted to reach for the little boy in the back of the bus. I wanted to tell him so many things he was too young to understand.

  I looked down at my cell phone. As I thought about the calls I needed to make I started laughing. A few faces turned towards me. Who the fuck was I kidding, I thought. Like any of it even mattered anymore.

  Pop’s townhouse was still technically a crime scene, but by this point most of the evidence had been either gathered or examined. Still, there was a uniformed officer in a squad car out front keeping an eye on the place. Because I was on foot, and since I had already used the 911 scheme, my choices were minimal. I was already walking down the street, which meant he may have already seen me. Time was ticking. I couldn’t rewind. I couldn’t duck around back like high school and sneak in the kitchen door. Confidently, as if I had nothing to hide, I walked up to the black-and-white and knocked on the window. I told him who I was and that I needed something from the house. He said he needed one second then he rolled up the car window.

  He picked up his cell and made a call never once taking his eyes off me. I acted as if I didn’t notice. I opened my own phone and pretended to be listening to my voice mail, and even went as far as to pretend I was speaking with someone. After a few minutes his window went back down.

  “That’s fine,” I said to no one. “Just have Carolyn put it on my desk. I’ll have a look at it when I get back to the office.”

  I hung up.

  “Sorry about that,” I continued.

  “What was it you said you needed to get?”

  “Just some paperwork I left here last week.”

  Surprised by my easy access I closed the front door behind me. All of the lights were off. The house felt so empty. Not just devoid of life but stripped of its soul as well.

  Keenly aware of my mission, and the Ia originals hanging on the walls, I steeled myself and headed upstairs. Everywhere I looked I was reminded of Pop. Through the years we had had so many important conversations. With each room I passed, and each piece of furniture I looked at, I could remember a different discussion and could remember his eyes as they responded to the nature of our words. I could hear his voice, his snarl as well as his laugh. I reached the study and planted myself in the chair behind Pop’s desk. I grabbed one of the brass handles and pulled it hard, sliding the file drawer all the way out. There had to be more, I thought. There had to be. Aside from his connection to Galina, Pop was somehow, between the note and the stock certificates, tied to the missing eggs that were connected to Andreu Zhamovsky and Pavel Derbyshev. There had to be
more. If there wasn’t, why was my father writing me what promised to be some sort of explanation in the midst of all this?

  I started rifling through the files. Each time I heard a car come down the street I stopped moving, breathing, until I was satisfied it wasn’t slowing down. When it passed, I jumped back in with the same fervor I had started.

  No different than a computer search, I decided to go with key words. The first was “Andreu.” My fingers went to work but quickly came up empty. Next was “Prevkos,” and while there was a hell of a lot of information in this file, from annual reports to news clippings, there was nothing relevant in terms of my search. I scratched my head. “Eggs,” “Fabergé,” “Zhamovsky,” “Galina” again, nothing.

  Fuck.

  “Derbyshev,” “Pavel,” “Baltimore,” still nothing.

  As the pit in my stomach grew at an unsettling rate, it became all too clear I wasn’t getting anywhere. I started to broaden the search. “Missing,” as in missing eggs. “Other,” like other son. “Mystery,” for mystery man in Baltimore. “House,” as in House of Fabergé.

  Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.

  I slammed my fists on the desktop and looked at my watch. I was supposed to be grabbing some papers. Time was running thin.

  “Screw it,” I said out loud.

  I started at “A” and flew through the entire alphabet as if someone had hit the fast-forward button. When I reached the end, having gained nothing, I angrily slammed the drawer back into its slot. I jumped from the seat and raced to the window. The cop was still in his squad car writing on a metal clipboard.

  I desperately hit the floor in front of the safe. I swung back the book door and immediately began to twist the black, numbered dial, turning it so fast the intermittent clicks all ran together. Marbury, Thomas, and Sweetney, so quick it was like they were on a fast break. The door swung open.

  Everything was exactly as I had last seen it. I opened my briefcase, which was on the ground to my right, and placed inside all the cash from the safe. I looked at the watches and Roddick ball, but didn’t really pay either much attention. I went right for the rear wall and lowered it. When I did, it only took a few moments of searching to see I was still cold.