I Kill Rich People: New Edition Released 11/27/14

by Mike Bogin

  As an academic exercise, Al had given it thought plenty of times. There were three hundred million weapons in private hands in the country. Even the most invasive police state could never identify those individuals who kept their views to themselves. If a skilled individual were to strike just once, traditional law enforcement could not be effective. If many individuals, acting independently of one another, were to strike each on his own, uncoordinated but with the same broad intentions, all the drones and cameras and satellites put together could not help law enforcement to stop even a few of them.

  “So,” Al summarized, “we have our Bigfoot out on the loose. I looked something up: there are a thousand families in Manhattan alone, each with more than one hundred million dollars. A thousand families just here. How do we catch a man with the skills to kill from a half mile away and a thousand targets to choose from?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “EE,” Crazy Thumbs argued, “none of this is funny!” If they wanted gravitas, his audience would listen to NPR.

  “EE, if you take all the wealth of all the rich in the country and hand it over to the poor, they’d still be poor. Boss, that experiment has been tried. This political focus isn’t our kind of radio.”

  Elliot was undeterred. “Somebody needs to speak the truth to power.” Like every comedian, clown, or fool, he was certain that he had more to offer, that he could handle the serious roles, too.

  “Oh fuck me, EE. We’re doing a show, the best show ever. Be happy!”

  “So we do shtick and let the fucking country fall apart right in front of our eyes? The Burning of Rome, and I’m playing fiddle.”

  “EE, you’re not the emperor.”

  Emerson glared through his trademark sunglasses all around the glassed-in studio walls then turned on Crazy Thumbs.

  “Here, I am Emperor. Right here.” A funny guy. “I don’t want to be just a funny guy. I was there, remember. Morris Levy’s head exploded in my hands!” EE had seen death up close.

  New York was the epicenter of money, money buying influence, access, sex, fawning admiration. His listeners were getting screwed, ripped off by guys who bought their way past everything and were letting the country go to hell in the process.

  How many of the networks were even addressing how obscene wealth had actively undermined American democracy and crushed the middle class? Zero. Not a one.

  Why would you expect the guys who happily went to Iraq “embedded” with the troops, never questioning the whole Iraq manipulation, to turn around to really examine wealth and power? Not one of them had ever published a list of the guys who got rich off that war, either. Duh! Maybe you need to shoot some people in the head, ’cause that’s the only way they’ll come to their senses.

  While crowds gathered in front of Wall Street financial firms, some spontaneously shouting obscenities, others praying for executives rushing from their cars, uniformed police moved barriers around the entrances. Clear glass doors were coated with thick obscure film, too, made to withstand small arms, as a favorite habit emerged: popping paper bags as the big shots scurried into their towers. Few in the crowd were committed enough to keep at it after policemen threatened them with arrest, but plenty of hilarious scenes made it onto YouTube.

  “Thumbs, did you hear about the robbery yesterday? Middle of the day. There’s this super high-end jewelry store, Genève. This place is strictly second-floor, no street business at all. I mean, you can’t buy a keychain in there for less than twenty grand. I got this watch—”

  Thumbs hit the stop instantly, cutting Elliot off in mid-sentence, moving to commercial.

  “What?” Elliot asked. Why was Thumbs cutting off to commercial?

  “EE, you’re talking about A-Rod and mid-sentence you’re over to some robbery. Come on, EE.”

  “So? It’s good stuff. I got the watch there.” EE held up the wafer-thin Patek-Philippe to show his producer.

  “EE, what the hell are you thinking about? You can’t go on and on about Bullets for Billionaires, do a running tally on killings, and then talk about shopping for yourself in stores for untouchables. EE, it’s not only the contradiction, you’re putting a target on your own back.”

  “Good point,” Elliot conceded. But he still had to tell about the robbery. It was a really good robbery.

  “So Genève has stores all over the world. Paris, London, Hong Kong, Beverly Hills, Sao Paulo. Since Bullets shows up, nobody is coming in to the Manhattan store over in Trump Plaza. So the store sends out invitations reminding its best customers of its Shop-at-Home service. They’ve got this Rolls Royce, bulletproof, solid tires, high-security special vehicle.”

  EE could picture the whole thing. As soon as the fancy stores adapted, so did the robbers. “So the Rolls rolls out from the underground parking lot, gets two blocks up Fifth Avenue, and is stuck in traffic behind a truck, with another car, nothing to do with this, right on its rear bumper. Sandwiched.”

  It was something straight out of a Hollywood movie. “The robbers got out of the truck and dumped a five-gallon paint can of gasoline on the hood of the Rolls,” EE laughed. “Whoosh. They lit it up. Flames twenty feet high. Driver and security guard jumped out, hands up. Robbers popped the trunk, snatched the jewels, and off they went, doubled up on motorcycles while traffic was jammed for everybody else. So cool.”

  Thumbs knew better than to hope for predictability. It was EE’s show, like EE reminded him four times a day. What the hell did that robbery have to do with A-Rod’s hitting slump? Nothing. Digressions were all part of the charm.

  * * * * *

  “Mr. Epstein, this is Sarah Cochran. It’s a pleasure to speak with you.” Crazy Thumbs wasn’t accustomed to hearing his real name when he was in the studio. He also wasn’t used to hearing honey-smooth feminine voices buttering him up. “Mr. Epstein, I’m an executive recruiter. I represent a client right here in New York who requires an experienced producer for his talk radio programming. This doesn’t happen often, but I can tell you, Mr. Epstein, that I am working off a very short list of candidates. Yours is the only name on it.”

  Thumbs listened silently.

  “Mr. Epstein, are you still with me?”

  “I’m here,” he stammered.

  “Wonderful. Mr. Epstein, I’d like to send you over a non-binding offer that I hope you will be willing to consider. There’s no harm in that, right?”

  “Who is it?”

  “That is confidential for now, Mr. Epstein. The position is currently filled, so you can appreciate the need for discretion. All that I can say is this client completely owns the top ratings position in all of radio.”

  “Howard Stern?”

  This time it was the recruiter who left the line silent. “Mr. Epstein,” she eventually responded, “I can’t confirm or deny anything. Let me just say that he is very much aware of your work and he has presented me with the broad details of a very competitive offer that begins with a signing bonus equal to 20 percent of a first year salary of $180,000, plus an excellent benefits package with full medical, dental, vision, matching 401k, five weeks paid vacation…the works.”

  Howard Stern, Thumbs kept repeating in his head, while simultaneously doing the math on the $36,000 signing bonus.

  “Do I have your interest, Mr. Epstein?”

  “I need to think about this,” Thumbs responded. Fifty thousand a year more money, two weeks more vacation, and Howard Stern.

  “Mr. Epstein, I understand that you probably have things to consider, but I can’t keep this client waiting. If not an answer, at least give me something to bring back to him.”

  “I’ve been working where I am for nine years,” was all that Thumbs could think to say.

  “Mr. Epstein, your loyalty is something executive recruiters like me don’t see often enough. Can I make a suggestion? Why don’t I email you
a sketch of the details. I encourage you to speak with Emerson and give him the opportunity to match the offer. But I need to hear back today. Before five.”

  Thumbs functioned on auto-pilot. The recruiter’s call left his head perspiring even though the studio was kept at sixty degrees. For the remainder of the day, he forced his boss to ad-lib. Normally, Thumbs would have produced texted headers for each phone line to show Elliot the caller’s name, why he was calling, and whether the callers was a frequent caller to the show. Through fifteen minutes of a call-in segment, Thumbs entirely forgot the headers.

  “Fuck, Thumbs!” Elliot shouted during the commercial break. “Where’s your head today, bro?”

  “EE, can I go to tape? I need to talk to you, man.” Every movement of the second hand on the clock felt like a tightening rope around his neck. He had to get it off his chest.

  “Emerson, I just got an offer to go over to Howard Stern,” he blurted out. “He needs to know today.”

  Elliot removed his headphones and stared, not saying a word while Thumbs looked back at him.

  “What’s the offer?”

  Thumbs walked through the details, apologizing at each data point. “Emerson, I’m not looking to leave. That’s why I’m talking to you. Hell, they even suggested I see if you will match them.”

  “I’ll do better than match them, Thumbs. Howard’s a great guy. Let’s give him a call and hash this out.”

  “We can’t do that,” Thumbs urged him as Elliot picked up the phone. “It’s all confidential.” Thumbs was even more worried when Elliot put down the phone and smiled like he hadn’t a care in the world. Thumbs couldn’t read the signals. Was Emerson completely confident that he wouldn’t leave, or was Emerson implying that he was easily replaceable? He could leave! If he did leave, Emerson couldn’t find anybody who would hang in there with him for nine years!

  “Thumbs, there is no offer.”

  “Of course there is. Emerson, it’s right here in my phone!”

  “You’re not getting it, Thumbs. It’s the oldest trick in the book. You approach me to match them, I lose it and fire you, and then you’re gone and that job disappears. That’s not real. Somebody out there is looking to knock us off track, rattle the program.”

  Thumbs spun on his stool and leered sideways across the sound board straight into Emerson’s green eyes. When he stopped staring, what he felt was mainly relief.

  “I could have used that bonus,” he mentioned aloud. He was thinking about remodeling his little cabin in Maine.

  “Not real, Thumbs. We’re getting jacked around.”

  * * * * *

  Casey was wrestling Tremaine to steal the quarter that Tremaine held inside his fist, peeling back finger by finger until he had it himself.

  On the sidewalk in front of the house, before dinner, Liam practiced his fifty pitches with a tennis ball rather than a hardball, but Owen still had to do his best to catch the pitches without his bare hands stinging too much.

  After they had all eaten well, inside the kitchen Callie and Tremaine loaded the dishwasher, which Callie then turned on, operating on autopilot. The dishwasher motor revved and went silent. Everything else in the house went dark. She had forgotten that the fuse box couldn’t handle the air-conditioning units and the dishwasher at the same time. Owen wanted to wait until he had all the wiring in place downstairs before they hired an electrician to put in a new breaker box.

  Like most of the time, Tremaine made a joke of it. “You trying to get me in the dark, baby?” Callie wasn’t in the mood for humor. She felt her way to the utility drawer handle and pulled it open, feeling for the flashlight and catching her finger on something sharp.

  “Did you turn on the dishwasher?” shouted Owen. Before Callie could answer, both Owen and Tremaine’s telephones buzzed in concert and they were moving fast for the car, leaving Callie in the dark with her finger bleeding and two small boys now way too wound up to get to sleep.

  Liam had the flashlight and knew to go to the fuse box, while Casey leapt to snatch it away from his taller brother. For several minutes, all she could think about was coping. And then Callie got pissed. Turning on a dishwasher doesn’t short out a whole house unless you’re living in a piece of shit.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Within the People’s Republic of China, the day had begun with one hundred and fifteen men and women officially confirmed as billionaires. There were now one hundred twelve.

  Since 2004, within the fine art auction marketplace Chinese purchasing had grown from 3 percent to 24 percent of gross activity. Amongst lots over $500,000, the Asian market was passing fifty percent market share. Fine wine, Asian artifacts and large gemstones were utterly dominated by Chinese buyers. For Barrow Taylor, survival of the firm came down to controlling the fallout from the murders. Two major Chinese clients. Right on their doorstep. Losing the Chinese market meant ruin.

  Thirty-six hours earlier, private security personnel and uniformed NYPD had lined York Avenue to guard a private event three years in the planning. The mayor himself placed a personal call to the Chief of Police to reinforce the importance of a “VIP all-the-way” kid-gloves approach. This specialized auction, Treasures of the Han Dynasty, had to proceed without incident. Several of China’s most influential and most affluent collectors were willing to attend despite the recent events. An event of this magnitude could not be postponed. What had happened could do more than crush an auction house; the attack could very easily wipe New York City off China’s radar for years to come.

  The event that had drawn such attention was anchored by four collections comprising two-thousand-year-old sculptures, jewelry, art, and artifacts made available for purchase for the first time. Three of these collections had been sourced from British peers whose ancestors had pillaged them from China in the nineteenth century. Holding the auction in London would have been politically inappropriate and holding it in Hong Kong was a political impossibility. Chinese authorities could not permit looted treasures to be openly sold on Chinese soil. So long as these were in private hands, repatriation into China after purchase could be arranged in a quiet manner. For these reasons, Barrow Taylor had broken tradition to hold a summer auction at the New York headquarters.

  Barrow Taylor had placed its entire emphasis on the burgeoning Chinese marketplace for anything and everything that met the key criteria: rare, expensive, and prestigious to buyers only one generation free of the smothering effects of communist prohibitions on overt wealth. While the other auction houses were still deriding them as “the wheel Barrow,” Barrow Taylor had hired the best Chinese business and art minds away from post-graduate studies at Oxford and Cambridge to cultivate its business. Not only were they represented in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai, but also in Guangzhou, Kunming, Xining, and even Kashgar, reaching 400,000,000 Chinese through internet advertisements displaying treasures from the cultures that had been absolute masters of their world for thirty-nine of the past forty-one centuries. That century of weakness was an anomaly. The Chinese were set upon making that clear.

  The bound catalogue, sent out fully a month prior to the international obsession with Bullets for Billionaires, displayed the 120 auction items. Many included histories of both the original emperor and the British family in whose trust the item had been kept.

  Daily, Barrow officials contacted each bidder with assurances of the precautions in place. Fully half the interested buyers sent proxies, but few had ignored the event. Han Dynasty artifacts of this caliber would be available to the marketplace very few times in a century.

  Senior management had made several subtle changes to their main salon. Up-lights had been installed at ten-foot intervals sixteen feet up the nineteen-foot walls, casting a soft full-spectrum glow off the ornate white-plaster ceiling. Every one of the tall double-hung windows was shut tightly behind blackout curtains of gold silk fabric. Floo
r lighting and halogen spotlights were to be focused on each lot. The herringbone teak floors were stripped, screened, and refinished with matte because the glossy finish had reflected glare from the halogens.

  The auctioneering podium was placed discretely behind the displays, which were centered at the front, closer to the bidders. These bidders entered more slowly than usual, due to the higher security standards, and were greeted by wait staff offering Perrier and Moët from trays. Some bidders sought seats, while others eyed their competitors. A rare few made any contact whatsoever.

  The auction began slowly. A large and extremely rare terracotta tortoise from the Western Han Dynasty collection belonging to the Sterling Household failed to meet its six-hundred-thousand-pound sterling reserve. A five-storied pagoda in white jade, a realistic miniature of an actual building constructed hundreds of years before the artist was commissioned to carve the work of art, received a tepid response. The auctioneer drew attention to the intricately carved portico and door fronts. She spoke with reverence about the uneven rooflines, about the shuttered window beside the matching window left open, the artist’s Courbet-like skill capturing the instant he observed. The piece fell to a single opening bid of one million Euros.

  Lot Three was a terracotta winter soldier, a full-scale archer kneeling to ready his bow. His chin was held high. His hair was gathered into a high bun. The leather armor bunched around his waist, a thick woolen tunic ran to his thighs, and his pant legs showed filled quilting down to rounded boots.