"You all right?" a voice hovered in the air outside the stall door.
Gabe ignored the man's voice. He leaned over the toilet and stared at himself again in the water and shreds of paper left in the bowl. He wanted more than anything to exorcise the scotch and rid himself of the demons sloshing inside him. His fingers flicked at the uvula in his throat. He gagged, but nothing liquid came out.
"Just make me sick," Gabe whispered, "please, God."
Knocking came at the stall door. His body lurched forward, still bent over, and he heard a plop into the mottled yellow water. His hands clapped against his tuxedo jacket too late, rummaging his breast pockets, scanning for the loss. He compressed his eyes, sober for one second, staring into the bowl. An extra bullet, pointed-end first, listed near the top and sunk. It plinked at the bottom of the toilet bowl.
"Gabe, what's wrong? You all right? It's me . . . Max."
Gabe stared inside the toilet, plunged his hand deep into the muck, and grabbed the cartridge. He dried the bullet with toilet paper, slipped it back into his pocket. The other bullets were already loaded in the .38, primed for the one he blamed for his chaos.
When he opened the door, Max's ballooning cummerbund met him.
"Jesus, Gabe, are you sick?"
"Get the hell outta here, Max. I'm fine. Just let me wash my hands."
"You hear that outside, Gabe? They're looking for you. The speeches, remember? Hey, you don't look so good. You're green."
"Yeah, the speeches, I remember." Sink water washed down on Gabe's hands, the crusted filth beneath his fingernails going down the drain, back outside to the rain, to the overflowing gutters. "Walk me back to the ballroom, would you, Max?"
$ $ $
Raphael Bianco was standing at the bar stand on the edge of the moat around the Temple of Dendur. He was staring at the carvings from 15 B.C. of Egyptian gods on the temple's sandstone walls and the two entrance columns sprouting up like papyrus stalks. The bartender handed him his drink, and Raphael squeezed back through the crowd to Elliott waiting near a row of Egyptian sarcophagi, heavy stone tombs in the shape of human bodies with animal faces. The band of middle-aged black guys were grooving on the raised level between the temple and the stone entranceway on the platform. Lawyers awkwardly shook their hips and snapped their fingers as the band finished off the set with Sister Sledge's We Are Family. Raphael listened to the sound echoing off of the stone walls and the sixty-foot high ceilings. The magnificent room full of thousands of people made him feel like a pharaoh. When the band stopped, someone got on the microphone to say there would be a few words from the partners.
Raphael puffed out his chest, nudged Elliott. "I guess Mikey's a no-show so I might as well tell you. They're going to make a formal announcement tonight after the speeches."
"Oh? Announcing what exactly?"
"You jackhole, you know. The big news?" Raphael raised his glass in mock toast. "The new partners. They're gonna announce who's been made tonight."
"Really?" Elliott clicked his highball glass against Raphael's, spilling soda on his sleeve. "Did they tell you already? They must have, right? Congratulations!"
"On the down-low. They called everyone who made it." He put his arm around Elliott's narrow shoulders. "All those billable hours, all that time in the Death Star, all the asses I kissed. It was all worth it, dude. Wait, check it out, someone's getting on stage. They're starting the speeches. Fuck, I wish Mikey was here to see this."
Elliott began whispering his best guesses about which associates would make partner in each department, but Raphael only pretended to listen. He was slugging a vodka tonic and squinting hard at the raised platform. He noticed rain washing down the long slanted windows on the other side of the room, and some idiots still chattering even though Jerry Sullivan had taken the mike.
Raphael said, "Shh, be quiet. Show some respect."
He clapped loudly through the longwinded monologues, drank his vodka, and all the while imagined how they would introduce him. One of the Firm's brightest associates and a close personal friend of mine. Which partner would say that about him? Gabe Weiss, maybe? He wanted to call his parents in Westchester and tell them the Firm was about to make it official. His mom was probably watching the late movie, his dad walking their Chinese pug before bed. He imagined holding up his cell phone so they could hear, And now one of the Firm's rising stars and the newest partner in General Litigation, Mister Raphael Bianco.
He could almost taste it, standing in the middle of The Met's Egyptian room. Raphael got his cell phone ready, looked around to make sure no one laughed at what he was doing. The other lawyers in black tie and cocktail dresses were sweating in silence, eyes glassy and slow. With his cell phone camera, he started snapping photos of partners parading up to the platform, one by one, standing at the edge over the moat to address their underlings. The Firm's anniversary ending with blowhard speeches from the most profitable partner of each department. M & A, Finance, Bankruptcy, Tax, Products Liability, Gen Lit, even the uptight wannabe prosecutors in White Collar. Raphael kept clicking pictures and taking dozens of himself.
Eventually his eyes drooped, lulled by the rain against the long windows, sheeting and streaming down. A growing roll of thunder competed with each new speech or toast from a partner fumbling with the microphone. He thought about slipping into the bathroom, funneling Bolivian Marching Powder into his brain. He could use the boost, but he was afraid he'd miss the announcement of his name. He quickly perked up when Stu Greenbaum and his disgusting pink eye stepped up to the mike. In a white dinner jacket and silver paisley bowtie with matching hanky, Stu raised his hand to quiet the anxious crowd.
"I know everyone wants to get back to the festivities, but if I could just have your attention one last time. Don't worry, the band will start up again. But we have one final toast in honor of the Firm's anniversary." Stu looked around the platform, searching for someone. "Has anyone seen Gabe Weiss? He was here a minute ago."
People shuffled around, turning heads. Rumbling reverberated outside, and Raphael held his breath. Maybe Gabe really would say something about him? Maybe this was it? Raphael saw Max Goldberg's Cadillac-sized ass lumber up the three steps to the platform. Max was dripping with sweat and guiding someone like a seeing-eye dog toward Stu. It was Gabe Weiss, but he looked terrible. Bruises dappled his neck, and his eyes were garnet red and puffy.
"Holy shit," Raphael whispered to Elliott, "Vader's completely wasted, dude."
Raphael bit his lip, feeling sorry for his idol. He could be on that platform any minute, shaking hands with Gabriel Weiss in front of everyone. Partner to Partner.
Stu carefully placed the microphone in Gabe's hand. Gabe looked around the huge crowd of people, and Raphael wondered if he were looking at him. Raphael waved.
Gabe looked past him, slurred into the mike, "You'll have to forgive me. We've all done a little too much celebrating, and I'm trying to find my. . ." Gabe searched his tuxedo pockets, pulled out a sheet of paper. "My speech, here it is."
Raphael imagined his name written somewhere on the piece of paper.
Gabe squinted at the paper and tossed it on the dance floor. The drummer did an impromptu rim shot, and there was laughter followed by mumbling. Then only the rain.
Gabe said, "Some of the partners thought it would be nice if we got up here and told schmaltzy stories about the Firm from the last four decades. But I thought about doing things a little different for my speech. At first, I was going to get up here and tell the real stories, the dirt about the partners who make Sullivan & Adler what it is. Like Stuart Greenbaum, here. The best-dressed man in the litigation department. What a lawyer, huh?"
Hundreds of Sullivan & Adler lawyers applauded. Stu waved like a campaigning politician, and Raphael watched Hannah Smythe posing next to Stu, beaming silvery teeth.
Raphael muttered, "Smiling like Monica Lewinski at a Clinton rally."
"Yeah," Gabe's voice came through the speakers, "I was going to get up
here and tell everyone that Stu goes through associates like toilet paper. That he's never met an associate he wouldn't shit on."
Raphael snorted, watching Stu and Hannah's faces suddenly contorting. The crowd froze, and the sax player giggled. Raphael pointed his cell phone and snapped a photo of Gabe.
Stu stepped up to the microphone stand, put his hand on Gabe's shoulder.
The mike picked up Stu's frenetic voice, "For Christ's sake-"
"Shut up." Gabe brushed past Stu, stepped to the front edge of the stage, teetering over the shallow moat. "I could tell nasty stories like that about all the litigation partners here except maybe Melvin Adler, God rest his soul, and big Max Goldberg. Max is the only good one left in the lot, that's for sure. But the nasty stories would take all night and it's not my style. So I decided to tell one story about the biggest asshole of them all at the Firm." Gabe looked around the room, nodded with a wide smile. "Me."
The audience chuckled uncomfortably.
"A long time ago, when I was a young man and I still had dark hair, I made partner here in the New York office. Just like a lot of you did today. Not too many people know this, but the same year I made partner, my wife had our first child, a son we named Isaac. It was a dream come true, let me tell you. I always wanted a boy and I was so proud of myself, I couldn't stand it. But I took my good fortune for granted. I didn't see Isaac very much after he was born because I thought I should be at the office, toiling away, putting in the hours. I made money sure. A lot of it, too, and it was exciting. No, it was intoxicating. But I aged like hell, too, and I got used to being away from my family. I didn't think much about it until Isaac's third birthday. My wife had been planning a party in our backyard for weeks. She was pregnant with our second child, Sarah, but my wife went the whole nine yards. Did everything herself. She's strong like that. She booked a clown and a magician, and she must've invited every single kid in the neighborhood. She even made these party favors, too. These little soccer balls and uniforms I'll never forget. She knew I wanted Isaac to be an athlete like his dad. It was probably his first party where he actually knew what the hell was going on, and my wife was in her glory about it. She must've talked about it and nagged me for weeks reminding me over and over to leave the office early." Raphael watched Gabe Weiss smile again, but the expression had no joy. It was more like someone accepting his fate. "I knew I should've left the office that day, but I was still a junior partner trying to develop my book of clients and working directly under the man himself, Jerry Sullivan. He was my hero back then, and I didn't want to disappoint. So I never left the office early. By the time I made it home that day, there were a hundred nosy neighbors I'd never met in my life and police cars blocking the middle of the street.And that's when I saw a truck in front of my house. I remember being annoyed because it was parked on the lawn."
Raphael and Elliott eyed each other in disbelief. Another stroke of lightning, and the lights dimmed for a moment. Raphael looked around the room full of faces staring at Gabe, drawn in by his story.
"Yeah, I missed the birthday party that day, and I found out from a paramedic in my driveway that somebody's kid had been taken away. When it happened, I was in the office, sitting in the same chair I sit in every day. When my son, Isaac, was drowning." Gabe dropped his head, composed himself. "If I'd been there, I would have been paying attention to the swimming pool. I like to think I would have drained it or put a gate around it." He lifted his head back up, sighed. "Afterwards, I filled up the pool with concrete, and my wife and I never talked about it again."
Rain poured down the long museum windows. In the silent crowd, Raphael watched as Stu tried to take Gabe's arm and lead him away. The microphone fell to the floor and bleated feedback. Gabe pushed Stu off the stage and glowered with fists thrashing at his sides. Raphael heard Sullivan & Adler lawyers squeal in fear, and he felt a strange sense of comfort to see someone else coming undone and disintegrating.
"No!" Gabe shouted. "I'm not finished yet!"
Voices began yelling, "Get him off! He's drunk! Stop this!"
In the shouting, the lights flickered, but Raphael's eyes were fixated on the stage. Two partners hustled onto the stone platform, waddling up to corral Gabe. And that's when everything seemed to stand still. Gabe Weiss pulled something out of his tuxedo jacket. A silver pistol waved at the end of Gabe's arm, pointing at everyone and no one in particular. People began shrieking, scrambling off the platform, shouting for someone to call 9-1-1, but Raphael stood inert among the panicked mob.
Gabe picked up the microphone again, his voice trembling, "I'm the worst one of the lot here. That's the message I wanted to tell all of you. I've been living a goddamn lie." He stared calmly at one person. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, honey."
Raphael looked around the room, following Gabe's eye line. In the midst of legs and arms flailing and shoving past, he saw Gabe's wife, Rachel Weiss, looking like a catacomb statue in a shiny black dress, holding her head, lips pleading, "No, no, no."
Gabe leveled his pistol at her, whispered into the mike, "I've been working for three decades and for what? To come home one day and find that I lost my son. To find that I don't even know one thing about my own daughter."
Gabe's wife turned, locked eyes with Raphael, and screamed, "Please help him! Please!"
But Raphael couldn't feel his own legs.
Gabe said, "To come home and find that my wife, my beautiful Rachel, that she was neglected most of all while my greed blinded me to the truth."
Gabe lifted his arm higher, aimed the gun at his wife's head, fifty feet away.
She pleaded, "No, Gabriel!"
Raphael finally moved, hurdling over a cordon at the moat, his feet splashing through the shallow pool, waving his arms at Gabe.
Gabe's amplified voice sputtered and trembled, "I don't blame you, Rachel. I love you. Forgive me, there's nothing left of me."
Raphael jumped onto the platform, reaching for Gabe, shouting, "NO!"
But Gabe Weiss had already turned the gun on himself, and Raphael's ears rang deaf from the blast.
37 The Monday After
* * *
Micah didn't know about Gabe Weiss's suicide the night Micah had torched his own time diary and gone home for the weekend. He had been getting calls from Raphael on Friday night, but he ignored them, thinking that Raphael would be badgering him to show up at the Firm's anniversary party. When the calls kept coming on Saturday, Micah checked his voice mail. Raphael had left frantic messages, each one more drunken and desperate than the last, saying that Gabe died in his arms. Micah had been too upset to call Raphael back, depressed by everything that had happened, deciding what to do, afraid that Raphael would try to change his mind.
He had looked up to Gabe almost as a father figure at the Firm and couldn't help wondering if the suicide had something to do with him. Either Gabe's wife or the Mavros case or both. Micah had been sitting in his apartment with his phone off, feeling guilty, sleeping too much, resenting the fact that there was no humanity in being a cog in the machine. The machine had no conscience, no emotion, no beating heart. If one of the cogs in the machine failed, it was quickly and efficiently replaced. The cogs were temporary, but the machine was forever.
He'd spent the weekend locked away working on his plan instead of Hannah and Stu's new case. By Monday morning, he was anxious to get to the office and see Raphael. He went to work late without a briefcase or Blackberry, wearing an inappropriately casual short-sleeve shirt and shorts. He felt clean and plain without the trappings of being an associate.
When he exited the S train and emerged into Times Square, the S & A tower loomed above. With the pulsing August sun reflecting down, the Death Star's fortress of windows was a sterile mirror of the city around it. People shoved past as he stared up at the skyscrapers, the billboard advertisements, the neon signs, and the newswire scrolling above Broadway.
A chill rushed through him as the huge news ticker spat out one word at a time sideways: HEADLINE MO
NDAY: BILLIONAIRE NICK MAVROS REPORTED TO BE MISSING LAST 4 DAYS. He'd thought about the video he sent to The Times on Friday. It seemed like weeks ago. Micah stumbled across Broadway to a news stand and grabbed a paper. The headline read: WHO WANTS TO FIND A BILLIONAIRE? Another tabloid declared: COPS SUSPECT MISSING BILLIONAIRE IN SEX ASSAULT VIDEO! He thought about the rape, about the media wasting no time capitalizing on the sordid details, about Gabe Weiss taking a gun and shooting himself in the head over it. Raphael's messages had said that Gabe seemed to be apologizing for something, and that Raphael tried to save him, but blood poured onto the museum floor. "In buckets," Raphael had said in one message.
Micah paid for one of the newspapers at the stand.
Inside the office tower, he rode the elevator up to his floor wanting to speak to Raphael first. He could feel the other attorneys staring at him, their taut faces inspecting his casual clothes. The faces looked more embarrassed than sad. He heard one partner whisper to another, "It happens. Remember the Horvath partner who was shot picking up a male prostitute?" He walked through the hallway on his floor, noticed the memos on the walls. He expected them to be announcements for a memorial service or a request for donations to a charity. But the memo announced that a grief counseling team would be in the office for hourly group sessions by department. The billable hours must go on. The secretaries' quads had the usual hum of computers and keyboard strokes, but the voices were not as loud on the telephones. It was a pall of corporate shame and rumor instead of the normal chatter and buzz.
Micah pushed open his office door, sat down at his desk, and immediately noticed the flashing light on his phone. He wasn't bothered by the red flare anymore. He dialed voice mail on speaker phone, listened to its digital routine more out of curiosity than duty.
PLUMMET: A Novel Page 25
