TAPE 72
[Commuter train, full of men and women in business dress. The windows are dark; it is night. Before the camera are the backs of two men’s heads.]
First man:—in the lowest quartile of the firm, I mean, billable hours is one of the measures. We all know that. So I ask him to come into my office and he did and we sat down and I said, “Gerry, we need to talk about how things are going for you.” And he became all defensive and said he was putting in the time. I said, “Waitaminute, you billed fifteen hundred and something hours last year, that’s not even in the middle.” He said he works all the time but that he has a family and has to see them. He’s put nine years into the firm and thinks he should get some leeway for that. I said okay, I understood that, but that there’s a feeling he’s not around enough. I mean, I told him that if he went on vacation with the McCabe thing not yet wrapped up, that it would fall to me and I wouldn’t be able to really handle it, and when he came back from vacation, it would be a mess. And that was what had happened. Gerry says he’s got a family to attend to, that his little girl was running around at a dinner party and went through a plate glass window and had nerve damage to her foot. His wife is pregnant with their third and he has to take the girl to a physical therapist or something. I say, “Can’t you hire somebody to take her, a baby-sitter or something?”
Second man: That’s kind of hard to do.
First man: Yeah, well, it’s also kinda hard to get the McCabe filings done on time when the senior partner isn’t around. I’ve got a couple of associates—you know, Pete what’s-his-name and Linda, they’re pretty good, but you know they prepared the basic contract on McCabe and there were some serious problems. These real-estate outfits who’ve been working in the city twenty, thirty years know all the tricks. Every one. They slip in funny little clauses that look innocuous, you know, and then you find out later that it pertains to some obscure part of the city code, and then you’re fucked, because it’s in the contract. Ends up costing a couple of million dollars—we’ ve had that happen.
Second man: So what did you tell Gerry?
First man: I told him he’s got to take less vacation time, he’s got to be around and start making his presence known. I mean, my billable hours have gone down, but that’s because I’m out there bringing in business. The guys on the compensation committee understand this. So Gerry says he doesn’t see how he can bring his hours up. He’s working around the clock all the time, his wife is on him to be home, he’s running from one place to the next, like all of us, right? I tell him that he’s got to understand that he has a problem at the firm. I can’t protect him anymore. I won’t protect him anymore. He says, “What do you mean?” We’re both thinking the same thing. Two kids in private school, third coming, the whole deal. So I say, “Let’s work something out where I know you’re going to be billing, say, nineteen hundred hours a year and you’ll take only one-week vacations.” Second man: What did he say?
First man: He didn’t say anything. It’s what he did.
Second man: What?
First man: You’re not going to believe it. He freaked.
Second man: What?
First man: Yeah. He says nothing. He gets up from the desk, stands up, and turns his back to me. I think, Okay, that’s weird. Then I realize what he’s doing. He’s taken his dick out and he’s pissing—
Second man: What? Get out of here!
First man: I’m not kidding. He walks around pissing here and there, he turns around and flips the piss up and some of it hits my desk, and then he goes over to the computer and pisses a little on that, and then he’s done. Zips up. He sits down again in his chair and looks at me. Like nothing happened. I’m just sitting there. I’m thinking about a million things. Can I fire this guy right now? No. That has to go through the committee. Only Carl can fire on the spot and he’s in Bermuda. I’m wondering if Gerry is genuinely crazy, is he dangerous?
Second man: Gerry’s just sitting there, calmly?
First man: Yeah, he’s very calm, too. Not even angry looking. And one drop has even soaked into one of my Mueller depositions that I was reading. We just sat there. Then I told him I thought he’d better figure that he was going to be let go. I said this as calmly as I could. I mean, the thing is already done, he’s gone way off, right? So then he says, “I will do my damn best to get my hours up to nineteen hundred a year, John, and you can be sure that I’ll arrange my vacations so I don’t take more than a week at a time.”
Second man: That’s weird.
First man: Then he leaves. So couple days later, the following Monday, Carl is back, and he and I and Gerry are in Carl’s office. Not the small one but the big one down on the sixth floor. I tell him what happened. Carl turns to Gerry. Gerry says that’s ridiculous, that’s insane. Yes, we had a discussion about hours and I’m going to get back on the wagon, but pissed in his office? That’s crazy, Carl.
Second man: Wait, wait, he’s denying the whole thing? Didn’t it leave a smell, or—
First man: No, the cleaning service was in there that same night; they dust and empty the trash and wipe everything down and vacuum. There was no smell left, no sign. So I had no proof. I’m sitting there looking at Carl, and I know Carl is thinking to himself, Which is crazier? One of my senior partners pissed in another’s office, or one of my senior partners claimed that another senior partner pissed in his office? Both things are equally crazy. I can see Carl thinking like this. I’ve worked for him a long time—
Second man: So has Gerry.
First man: Yeah, so has Gerry. So Carl looks at both of us. Then he’s looking at me with those tired old eyes. I know what he’s thinking. I have no evidence. Just my accusation. Then he’s looking at Gerry. Now, Gerry may not be putting in the hours, but the guy’s a straight arrow, always looks right, doesn’t even flirt with the secretaries.
Second man: Yeah.
First man: So Carl just sits there, thinking. Then he turns to Gerry and says, “How’s your little girl doing?” And Gerry says something like “She’s doing much better, matter of fact. The nerve damage in the heel isn’t too bad.” Then Carl says his own daughter once broke her foot horseback riding and it had to be set and then rebroken twice, and he used to hear her crying in her bedroom from the pain. And Gerry, that motherfucker, is just nodding to himself. Then Carl says to Gerry, “The doctors can do amazing things these days, I think it will be okay.” And I’m thinking to myself, Waitaminute, this isn’t why we’re here, we’re here because the guy pissed on my rug and my papers and everything, and so now we’re having a sad little talk about Gerry’s daughter? And so I say, “Hey, wait, Carl, we’re talking about the fact that Gerry pissed in my office.” [Now the second man looks out the dark window.] And as soon as I say that, I’m in trouble. Carl turns to me and he says, “That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about something else. I’m talking about a little girl crying in her bedroom because her foot hurts.” Then I’m thinking I better watch out. I mean, this is the man who took on AT&T, right, and won. So I say nothing. Then Carl says, “My little girl used to sit in her room and cry quietly to herself because she didn’t want us to hear her. We told her she had to be brave and not cry, and it was the stupidest thing we ever did with her.” He’s going on like this, I can’t believe it. Then I realize that Gerry is going to get away with it. He’s pissed all over my office and nothing is going to happen to him, I see that now. And Carl keeps going, and Gerry, that sly motherfucker, is just nodding and listening and maybe looking sort of like he’s got a tear in his eye. And I’m freaking out. He’s going to get away with it, he actually—
Second man [rising as train slows]: This is my stop.
First man: Oh. Yeah. Okay. See you … what, Friday?
Second man: Yep. [He steps past first man and into the aisle; holding his briefcase, he walks down the aisle and gets in line with other commuters. The train stops, making them all take a little step back, and then they file out. The sound of the train
accelerates. The first man can be seen scratching his nose. Perhaps he sighs. Then he reaches for his briefcase, unsnaps it, and pulls out a sheaf of papers, which he begins to read. The train continues, stop after stop. The man eventually puts away his papers and stares out the window. Streaks of rain have appeared on the glass outside.]
I popped out the videocassette. Clearly Simon was interested in fragments of what might be termed “found reality,” even if that reality included himself in the back of a limousine with a prostitute. I wondered if he had spent long hours studying these clips; he was a movie director—someone with an eye for the nuance of human behavior and movement and voice, someone who might feel himself instructed by these tapes in some meaningful way. Or then again, he might have just liked them for their voyeuristic satisfaction; after all, we are nothing now if not a nation of voyeurs. I stood up from the chair and opened the door and peered down the hall. Nothing, just a row of doors on either side and the expensive Persian runner down the center and a row of lights on the ceiling.
Back inside, I pulled out another tape. On the label, in clear handwriting, was the notation TAKEN BY M. FULGERI 5/94.
TAPE 67
[A Third World village. Low buildings of cheap construction, burnt-out cars. Camera pans across village; no one is in sight. But then it is clear that there are shapes on the ground across the way and the camera proceeds in that direction. Sound of footsteps, two people walking. The shapes are humans, flopped on the ground, motionless. Black bodies. They are piled casually, here and there, as if the whole village has been thrown violently from their beds and remained asleep. A mother with her child here, two little boys there, an old man, a small child impaled upon a thick pole—
Unidentified voice, British accent: I’d just keep it loaded, in case.
Second voice, Italian accent: Try the church. [Camera moves toward a larger building that has a peaked tin roof and low, glassless windows cut into the walls. The camera passes a woman lying in the dust, her breasts hacked off. In the entry to the church the camera is suddenly dark, and then the photoelectric eye adjusts.]
Italian voice: Yes, there, too. [Camera now enters a church full of bodies, all dead, piled on one another. - It is impossible to count, but certainly there are hundreds, maybe even a thousand, all dead, mostly children, their faces slack in the repose of death, flies buzzing from one to another. There are handprints on the wall—a hieroglyphic of swipings and drag-gings, suggestive of frantic activity. At the far end of the church there is movement, and the camera zooms closer; it is a small dog, eating in jerky bites; it looks up, its ears moving, and then looks down again and resumes eating. Camera pans back and forth over the dead; they had clearly herded themselves into the church for refuge, far too many than could sit on the pews, and the density of corpses suggests a methodically brisk pace of killing by hand. And yet the killers have lingered here and there; several of the bodies show extensive damage to the mouth, as if teeth have been cut out.]
British voice: I thought I heard some shots.
Italian voice: No, no. I don’t think so.
British voice: Maybe they’re killing the dogs.
Italian voice: You know what they all are doing now in my country?
British voice: No, what?
Italian voice: They watch the NBA play-offs. You know this thing? Very big in Italy. Basketball. Patrick Ewing. Everyone knows all the names.
British voice: Have a look over there. [Camera swings around again, taking in the panorama of death, and then proceeds outside the church. Three soldiers with blue U.N. helmets approach.]
First soldier: We ask you now to leave, please.
British voice: We’re documenting here. Colonel Aziz knows we’re here.
First soldier: My orders say to tell you now to leave, please. Thank you very much. Thank you. I am thanking you. Thank you. [Jerky panorama of church and earth and blue sky. Tape ends.]
I turned off the machine. But for the soft rush of the ventilation system, the room was utterly quiet now, and I was surprised to hear my own exhalation. Why had Caroline not told me about what was on the tapes? I found this vaguely disturbing. She and I had now entered into some kind of manipulated dialogue. But what kind of statement was she trying to make about her dead husband and perhaps about herself, too? That Simon Crowley was a connoisseur of human suffering? That he saw nothing of the goodness of life, that by collecting examples of what was ugly and dark and eternal about man’s nature he understood it better? That he was a true artist? A false one? I did not know or especially care. There is no image that is unavailable now. In terms of marvel or fantasia or pornography, it’s all been done. We carry inside ourselves an encyclopedia of ingested images; we can dream in slowmo and split-screen; in today’s special effect and about tomorrow’s atrocity. None of Simon Crowley’s images, even the tape from Rwanda, seemed less disturbing or more real than the daily offerings on CNN. I’d only seen a small portion of them, but they suggested that Simon Crowley had developed a fascination with “authentic” images. Whether these tapes were studies made for the purpose of improving upon his movie art or constituted an end in themselves was a question I couldn’t answer. No, the significance of the tapes for me was not that they characterized Simon but that they might reveal something about Caroline.
I was about to slip another tape into the machine when my beeper went off. My irritation was quickly superseded by fear. GO TO MR. HOBBS, the message read, followed by a phone number. GO TO MR. HOBBS. The only people with the beeper’s number were my wife, Josephine, the cops, my father upstate, Bobby Dealy, now off-duty, and the city editor. Hobbs, or one of his representatives, had called the newsroom and gotten the number from the city editor, who, although he knew the number was private, would not have refused Hobbs. Nor, of course, would I.
He maintained his international headquarters in London but kept a New York office in several floors of a building not far from Grand Central. Outside the bank, I stood in the cold, wondering whether I should call ahead to get an idea of what might await me or simply blunder into it. I opted for the call, found a pay phone, and was put through to Hobb’s office. “Yes, we are waiting to see you,” said a secretary. “Mr. Hobbs would like a word with you.”
“We could talk on the phone right now,” I suggested.
“Mr. Hobbs would like to see you in person, Mr. Wren.”
It was almost five-thirty in the afternoon. “Now?”
“Now would be wonderful.”
I didn’t answer.
“Tomorrow Mr. Hobbs will be in Los Angeles,” she said. “May we expect you in the next twenty minutes?”
The only allowable answer was yes. I hung up and put my arm out for a cab. They flew along Park Avenue as if whipped by the wind; it was the hour that men and women, hunched in coats and hats and scarves, hurried through the gloom, sensing that they were made small by the forces of nature and time, knowing that in a blink it would be all new people in the same stone grid. I wanted to be with my wife and children, warm in the kitchen, Sally drawing at the dining-room table, Tommy rearranging the magnets on the refrigerator. In my cab I pondered why a billionaire would summon a lowly columnist. I could think of no reason that comforted me. Hobbs was a man who did not waste time on people who could not provide him with something he desired.
When I arrived, a secretary was waiting for me like a sentry next to the elevator door. She smiled officially and took me back to a paneled office. Out the window, ten blocks to the south, stood the Empire State Building. I was introduced to a Walter Campbell—a polished walking stick of a man in a black suit who shook my hand vigorously, as if he were running for office.
“Always enjoy your columns,” he said with a London accent. “Quite vivid, I’ve thought.”
I blinked.
“Very good then, as to why we’re here this afternoon,” he said, leaning forward. “Now, this is an off-the-record conversation. You are present as an employee of the company, not, and I repeat that expressl
y, not as a journalist.”
I sat.
Campbell followed my eyes. “I assume this is understood.”
“Okay,” I said.
Campbell nodded. “Right. You are here because we have a problem. None of us has created the problem, but there is, however, a problem.” He looked at me. “My difficulty here—I—” Campbell smoothed his tie, then dropped his eyes to a piece of paper on his desk and turned it over. He gazed at it for perhaps ten seconds, then lifted his eyes to me. “You, sir, have recently been in the company of a certain woman who is not your wife. I attach no moralistic interpretation to this fact. I simply state what is known.”
I sat there, confused, anxious.
“You first spent time with her two nights ago, leaving her apartment sometime after two-thirty A.M. You visited her the next day in the afternoon and spent nearly three hours with her. Today, you met her at a restaurant, and then proceeded—”
“I know where I’ve been.”
“Right. Of course. Mr. Hobbs is going to ask you to accomplish something on his behalf. It is neither illegal nor dangerous, nor, in my opinion, unreasonable. Thus, the nature of our request is quite-” Here Campbell’s face became dull and cold, so much so that I understood now that he was an expert at this sort of matter, a corporate bagman. “Quite mandatory, I should say.”
“Or you’ll give me the heave-ho?”
“Well, we would have a response. Let us simply say that.” Campbell lifted a stapled document from his desk and handed it to me. “We’ve had a quick look at your contract. Look at page three, down at the bottom, please. There is a clause I should like for you to see.”
Manhattan Nocturne Page 13
