by Adam Gittlin
“Your father. I believe I read somewhere he isn’t well,” I add. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yes, well, he is a strong, spirited man with a lot of fight. So, why don’t we all—”
“Where do you actually consider your home base? Meaning, where is the firm actually incorporated?” I barrel forward. “If I’m correct, the checks come from what is a U.S.-based subsidiary of the Milan-based headquarters, correct?”
“Perhaps this is a conversation for later,” Julia tries to diffuse the situation.
“Why do you ask?”
“I’m just a man of detail, Enzo. Cobus will tell you, I like to have as much knowledge as possible when it comes to a building’s tenant roster. Makes for a much easier time dealing with whatever situations arise. And I can promise you, things always come up.”
Enzo, holding it together nicely, thinks for a second before responding.
“That is correct. We are a Milan-based company.”
“And you handle it the way you do for tax purposes, I imagine. Meaning there must be significant tax ramifications for having separate companies in each country as opposed to having separate subsidiaries that fall under the parent.”
“I’m sorry. We are a private company, so we don’t discuss how we handle our tax matters. I’m sure you understand, being a private company yourself.”
“Of course. Interesting. I’m just curious—how much of the corporate structure you’ve devised is based on the taxes as they relate to your staff?”
“Ivan, I really think this should wait until later,” Julia again tries to interject.
“I’m sorry, Ivan, why is it, once again, you are so interested?” Enzo goes on.
“Nothing more than due diligence. I just like to have as much knowledge as possible about with whom we’re getting into business.”
“Is that right?”
“It is.”
“Well, rest assured we are exactly the type of tenant you are happy to have. One that increases the value of your property.”
“Well, I guess that ultimately remains to be seen when one’s dealing with such a unique piece of real estate.”
Cobus places his hand on my back.
“Ivan—may I have a word?”
“Of course.”
“Please help yourself to some hors d’oeuvres,” Enzo says, looking to bow out gracefully. “Try my son’s favorite—the langoustine fritters in a lychee and dragon fruit glaze; just amazing.”
Not so fast.
“Thanks for having us,” I go on. “Hey, I’ve been thinking about taking a trip to South America. I read your family has a villa down there. Colombia maybe? Or Argentina?”
“Uruguay.”
“Right—Uruguay. I’ve heard it’s a beautiful country. I’m guessing the amount of hours you put in hardly leaves much time for getting down there.”
“There’s never enough time vacationing with one’s family. Now if you’ll excuse me …”
Cobus and I step aside.
“What are you doing, Ivan?”
“Learning about our tenant.”
“That’s you grilling our new tenant—a tenant with a fine reputation. We are both quite familiar with your due diligence practice and techniques. This was not that. This was you being aggressive. Why?”
Over Cobus’s shoulder I see Brand and Alessi having what seems to be an intense conversation.
Back off.
Keep Cobus where he needs to be.
To get where I need to go.
“I see what you’re saying. Perhaps it was a bit more of a discussion than we needed to have right now,” I concede. “Maybe I’m a bit on edge because I haven’t been sleeping well since we’ve arrived.”
Cobus, Arnon, and I are riding up in the hotel elevator following lunch.
“Dinner with GlassWell isn’t until eight. I believe Mr. Spencer himself is joining us.”
“He is,” I confirm. “I’m going to spend a little time going through the arrears reports for The Hague properties. I’ll see you downstairs when the car arrives.”
I step into my room. After waiting five minutes, I head back downstairs and out into the city.
CHAPTER 32
NEW YORK CITY
2013
I’m so tired.
I knew these few days would be brutal, but I underestimated just how worn down—mentally, as well as physically—I’d get. I have a massive headache. Everything is amplified. The city sounds aren’t just entering my ears, they’re reverberating through my entire body.
I take the disposable from inside my suit jacket and dial the main number for PCBL, my old firm. I remember the number by heart.
“PCBL, good afternoon,” a cheery voice answers.
“Good afternoon. I have an appointment with Jake Donald this afternoon, and I wanted to confirm his office is still on the eighteenth floor.”
A brief pause.
“Actually, Mr. Donald is on nineteen.”
Interesting. The Management Team floor. Looks as if someone has left the life of a broker behind.
“Ah—nineteen. Right. I appreciate the help.”
“Of course. We’ll see you later.”
My eyelids are really heavy.
Fuck.
Before hailing a cab to go see and rock the world of my old partner and close friend Jake, I see a bodega. I move toward it, thinking a Coke, iced tea, something with caffeine. But a little couple-ounce bottle called “Life Fuel”—with the tagline, “Coffee, what? Wake up! Fuel for Hours!” catches my eye.
I place two of the cherry-flavor bottles on the counter. I pay for them, shoot one down, and put the other in my pocket. Then hail a cab.
Steps before entering the famed Chrysler Center—where I used to work—my mind kicks into gear. Nowadays security for large office properties in all cities is beyond tight and starts the second one enters the lobby. One of the keys to understanding how to beat security in a busy building like the Chrysler Center: traffic flow.
My eyes shielded by sunglasses, I step into the lobby. Pretending to be speaking on my cell, I stop immediately. The first thing I take notice of is the security counter. The checkpoint is equipped with guards checking people into the building—or granting temporary building passes for those who show proper identification and are on the security guest list for the day. At the moment there are three guards working the desk. And they are completely inundated, no doubt feeling the pressure of a line of people looking to carry on with their days.
I put my phone away, flip my sunglasses onto my head, and blend in with the flow of traffic heading toward the elevator bank servicing the floor I need, deliberately never even looking in the direction of the security desk. Just as I’m about to reach the bidirectional optical turnstile—the one that will only open with the bar code from a full-time employee or day pass—I do an about face.
Just like life, it’s all about the timing.
And just like that, it appears as if I’m coming from the elevator bank.
“Fuck!” I yell.
But not a yell like I’m at a Knicks game and I want the ref to hear, more of a what-the-fuck-was-I-thinking yell that is just loud enough for those around me to hear—including the security guards. Right on point each of the three glances up at me. I catch one’s eye. I take three steps toward him.
“My cell phone. I left it upstairs. PCBL,” I say, throwing my thumb backward over my shoulder.
Always own the words that come out of your mouth, Pop always said.
And if you need to look like you belong—then look like you belong.
The security guard nods.
The acrylic barrier wing panels of the high-tech turnstile swing open.
“And how might we help you today?” asks the receptionist as I approach.
The PCBL reception area has gone through a facelift since I’ve last been here. The walls are still the same light shade of cream lined with the same trademark black-and-white stills of the Manhattan
skyline, but the space feels fresher, cleaner, more vibrant. The hunter-green carpeting has been replaced with carpet containing a smart, contemporary, cream-and-beige pattern. All of the mahogany—the wood, the doors, the furniture—has been replaced by lighter wood, most likely soft maple or birch. Lots of glass still allows the light to flow freely, evenly throughout the space. Flowers, as always, are everywhere—big, bold bouquets of vibrant, rare species that look like they’ve been pulled from every exotic forest on the planet.
“Good afternoon. I have a four p.m. appointment with Jake Donald.”
“Very well then. Let me just ring his office.”
We both wait in silence for a moment.
“Yes, Mr. Donald’s four p.m. is in reception,” she continues when the other end picks up.
She comes back to me.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Donald’s assistant doesn’t see anything on the books for four p.m. What did you say your name is?”
“I didn’t give it to you. And I have to confess, I don’t have a four p.m.” I say, motioning to her to cover the microphone bud on the headset she’s speaking into, which she does. “I’m an old college friend of Mr. Donald’s whom he hasn’t seen in fifteen years. I just happened to be in town and was really hoping to surprise him.”
“Oh, that’s so cool of you,” she said, “but unfortunately I can’t let you in or request someone out here unless I’m given a name. I hope you can understand.”
Not only do I understand, I was planning on it.
“Of course I do. Well, it was worth a try.”
Jake used to refer to a college friend he was close to but never really saw again after school because the guy lived in Seattle.
“Please just let him know that Mason Brody’s here.”
The receptionist relays the message. Then tells me Mr. Donald is on his way out.
I told myself I would detach upon walking into this office. I would keep my thoughts in the present and not let them pull me into the past. But my old life starts coming at me like a boxer’s jabs—an image of my old senior partner Tommy sitting behind his desk, another of the old Perry tearing into someone in the very conference room off right now to my left. So much happened here. From the business, to the personal. This place is still a part of me, always will be. The moment reinforces for me that we can never escape who we are, or where we’ve been. All we can do as people is take any and every situation that happens in our lives, and ask ourselves what we were supposed to learn from it as we figure out how to move forward.
A door from the offices leading into reception opens. Out walks my old partner, my old friend Jake Donald. His face looks essentially the same but is older, rounder. Same as the rest of his body as he appears to have ballooned in weight.
He looks at me, then to the receptionist. He’s confused.
I walk toward him.
“I’m sorry, I was told—”
“It’s great to see you, Jake,” I cut him off. “An old friend wanted me to show you this…”
I hold up my iPhone right in front of his face. The screen is on the notepad app, with the following words typed:
I’VE COME TO DISCUSS JONAH GRAY. IS THERE SOMEWHERE WE MIGHT TALK?
Jake is silent, motionless. I knew this would frighten him, and that I’d need to keep us moving forward.
“Everything is quite all right, but it’s important we speak. Is there somewhere we might chat?”
“Mr. Donald, is everything okay?” asks the receptionist, getting it I’m not who I said I was.
“Don’t be scared. You need to speak with me,” I whisper.
“Yes, yes, everything is fine,” Jake says to her, snapping out of it. “Of course. Right this way.”
We step into the conference room.
“What the hell is going on here?” asks Jake once the door is closed. “Do I need to call security? Because you need to know I will.”
“Why don’t you sit down,” I say.
“I’d rather stand.”
“Okay. But if it’s all right with you, I’m going to sit down. I’ve been on my feet forever.” I take the chair at the head of the long conference table.
“Like nine years.”
I’m hoping the soft reference to how long Jonah has been gone, and myself, might jar something loose. Which it doesn’t.
“How do you know Mason Brody?”
“I don’t.”
“Then—how; why—I don’t understand.”
“I know you don’t. There’s no way you possibly could,” I explain. “I only know about your college friend Mason Brody from you.”
“We’ve met before?” he goes on, eyes squinting subconsciously as he searches his mind for a previous image of me.
“We have. Only I wasn’t the man you’re looking at.”
I swallow, then continue in my God-given voice from my previous life.
“I was Jonah Gray.”
My voice startles him. He literally has to grab the back of one of the conference table chairs to keep his balance.
“What the fuck? How did—”
“I mean, I still am technically Jonah. I’m just—now—”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“Jonah Gray. I swear. It’s really me,” I say, standing up and taking a step toward him.
He heads for the door.
“Fuck this, I’m calling the police.”
“Wait. Don’t, please.”
He doesn’t listen. His feet speed up.
“Your father’s name is Ronnie Donald. He’s a portfolio manager for wealthy families. Your mother’s name is Florence—everyone calls her Flo—and she’s a nurse. Your favorite dish on the planet is the chicken parm at Scalinatella, which we used to always share along with the tubettoni con le cozze. You love big dogs, but you’re afraid of little ones, except for Neo, because he’s mine.”
Just as he cracks the door, he stops, looks at me.
“How the fuck do you know all this? How are you doing this?”
“It’s really me. Jonah. Think about it, Jake. Think about the circumstances surrounding Jonah Gray’s life when he disappeared. I had no choice to become someone else if Jonah Gray was to ever really reclaim his life. His name.”
“But, still—I don’t—you look—”
“Like another person. I know; I get it. I had no choice. But it’s really me.”
He’s almost there. I take a quarter from my pocket. I start flipping it in the air.
“The quarter,” he says under his breath.
“The quarter. When you were fifteen years old, on a ski trip in Vermont, you got separated from your classmates. A quarter to make a call saved your ass. You’ve carried one with you at all times ever since.”
He takes one out of his pocket and holds it up. I keep flipping mine.
“Me. I keep one with me also. Not because it’s going to do a lick of good for me on foreign soil or in the age of cell phones, but because it reminds me no matter where I find myself, no matter what situation I’m in—”
I catch the quarter.
“—I’m going to get through it. And one day, no matter what, get home.”
He closes the door. He walks over to me. He studies my face.
“That’s fucking insane, dude. Your face, the way they—you—”
“I missed you, man,” I cut him off.
“I missed you too.”
We give each other a big hug, then check each other out again.
“Don’t say it. I’m fat as a fucking house.”
“I … you … I wasn’t going to say anything. Except for the fact you’re on nineteen now. Management?”
“Management indeed. Come on, we used to both say we didn’t want to be brokers forever. Four years ago they offered me a lot of stock and a lot of stress to run all of leasing, so I took it. Obviously, from my waistline, you can see how well I’m handling the stress.”
“How’s Tommy?” I ask.
Jake dips his chin for a second.
> “He passed away. A couple years ago.”
Tommy Wingate was not just a close friend of my family, the one who gave me my first shot in the commercial real estate world, he was my mentor.
“No.” I say under my breath, grabbing the closest chair to me, a different one than the initial one I’d sat in. “What happened?”
“Heart attack. Right here in his fucking office.”
“No way. Wow. I wish … I wish I had a chance to speak with him again. To tell him, you know—”
“He loved you, Jonah, and he knew no matter what the fuck happened, there had to have been an explanation for all of it. We talked about you all the time. And when we did, all he ever said was you were the best young real estate mind he’d ever seen. And that he hoped you were safe. We both did.”
I feel a slight smile creep onto my face.
“A heart attack, huh?”
“Look, I always say to people it wasn’t such a bad way to go. It was fast, and he was somewhere he loved to be. Could have been worse. He could have been eaten by sharks or something.”
“Where’s Perry?” Jake changes direction.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? We assumed she was with you.”
“She was. Until something happened a few years ago.”
“Which was? Is she safe?”
Safe? I’m not sure whether she’s alive or dead.
“Look,” I wave him off, “it’s complicated. The less you know about everything the better. And I really don’t have much time.”
“So, then, what is it you want? Why are you here? Why now?”
“Because I need your help.”
“Help doing what?”
“Clearing my name.”
“Just name it, bro. Anything.”
“I need you to contact Detective Tim Morante at the Nineteenth Precinct. And tell him he needs to be on the beach behind the home at Forty-Four Mako in Amagansett tomorrow morning at five thirty a.m.”
“A New York City cop in the Hamptons? Why?”
“Seclusion. Anyway, don’t worry about any of that. I just need you to relay this message.”
“Forty-Four Mako. Why do I know that address?”
