by Marie Astor
“A cranberry margarita.”
“I’ll have the same,” Janet said to the bartender, “with an extra shot of tequila, please.”
“What’s gotten into you?”
“Dennis Walker,” Janet blurted out before she could stop herself. Talking about Dennis Walker was probably not a good means of putting the man out of her mind, but then she really could not help herself.
“Oh, that old story. What happened?” At least Katie had the decency not to roll her eyes, but the tone of her voice produced the same effect.
Janet sighed. “Nothing happened. That’s exactly my problem. Why can’t I just forget about him?”
“The man is cute, so I can’t blame you there. He is charming, and there is definitely chemistry between the two of you. Palpable chemistry.”
“You are not helping.”
“Look, Janet, if you like the guy, just tell him so. Who knows, maybe he’s thinking the same thing? Maybe underneath his bravado, Dennis is just shy and he’s afraid to ask you if you’d like to take your relationship to the next level.”
“Really? Somehow I just don’t think that’s the problem. And we don’t have a relationship.”
“I beg to differ. In my book routinely mooning over a man and jumping at his every beck and call, abandoning all prior commitments, is a relationship. A slightly warped one, but a relationship.”
Janet sighed. There had been one occasion when Dennis had asked her for a drink after work, and she had cancelled her night out with Katie because of it. “I’ve already apologized to you like a million times, and I bought you dinner to make up for it!”
“I’m not mad at you. I was just saying it to make a point, and the point is that you never break your commitments for anyone but you did it for him. You really like the guy, so just go for him.”
“Do you think that Dennis Walker really needs any encouragement when it comes to asking a woman out?”
“Fine, maybe he doesn’t. I’ll admit that he doesn’t seem like the shy type. But maybe he just doesn’t know that you’d like him to ask you out. I mean really ask you out.”
“In that case he is either deaf, dumb, or blind. Or perhaps all three, and he’s found a really good way to hide it. But I highly doubt it.” Janet finished the rest of her drink. “At least you’ll be glad to know that I’m not jumping at his beck and call anymore.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. He wanted to grab a drink after work tonight, but I told him no. Then he asked me if I can meet him tomorrow, and I didn’t commit to anything either.”
“That’s a good way to start—give the guy the cold shoulder.”
“Oh, come on! Don’t I get a break? First you say that I jump every time he snaps his fingers, and now you’re saying I’m giving him the cold shoulder? What was I supposed to do, stand you up instead?”
“No. But you can meet him tomorrow and just flat out tell him how you feel about him. Have a couple of drinks and then just kiss the bugger. There are only two possible outcomes: either he kisses you back, takes you to his place where the two of you proceed to make wild, passionate love, and you live happily ever after; or he doesn’t and, yes, there will be some embarrassment there, but at least you’ll get him out of your system.”
“There is also a third possibility where he takes me to his place where we make passionate love for one night, and then he never calls me again. Only it will be really awkward because we will keep seeing each other at work.”
“Is that why you’re so afraid to take things further with him?”
“Maybe.” Janet shrugged. “Let’s face it: I don’t have the best track record when it comes to dating coworkers.”
“Is this about Alex again? That was over a year ago. Why can’t you just forget about him?”
“Because now I see him every day, reminding me of my failure, and I don’t want to risk repeating the same experience with Dennis.”
“At least we’ve gotten to the bottom of this. I think I should have become a shrink instead of a lawyer,” Katie concluded. “Look, Janet, I’m not a relationship expert, but I do know one thing: when you want something or someone, you’ve got to go all in. I know I’m happy that I did.”
Katie was right. For about two months she had been happily dating one of the partners at her law firm.
“How are things with Adam?” Janet asked. A handsome, young attorney in his mid-thirties, Adam Lewis was a transfer from the Washington office, and Katie had been assigned as his associate. At first, the idea of anything more than a professional relationship with her boss had seemed impossible, but then one night, when they were both working late, their mutual attraction had taken over.
“Great. Just great.” Katie’s eyes lit up. “The firm is fine with it; they reassigned me to a different partner, and we are officially a couple. He’s taking me to meet his parents next weekend. And he is going to be my date for Lisa’s wedding. I was worried that he might get spooked—you know how guys are about going to weddings—but he said that he’d love to take me.”
“Katie, that’s wonderful! That means he’s really serious.”
“Dennis could be serious too. All you have to do is ask him.”
“If you must know the truth, I was going to ask him to be my date for Lisa’s wedding.”
“And?”
“He is seeing someone.”
“How do you know? Did you ask him?”
“I didn’t need to. I overheard him speaking to her on the phone. He called her honey boo.”
Katie crossed her arms on her chest. “That doesn’t mean anything. Do you really expect a man like Dennis Walker to be single? So he’s dating, but that doesn’t mean it’s serious.”
“And what makes you think that he wants to get serious with me?”
“I don’t know if he does or doesn’t, but I do know that unless you go out of your comfort zone, you’ll never find out. So who’s your date for the wedding then?”
“Peter Laskin.”
“The dude you told me about, the one with the hair plugs? Since when do you have a thing for him?”
“Not everyone has been blessed with Dennis Walker’s good looks. There’s nothing wrong with improving one’s physical appearance,” Janet snapped. “Besides, attraction has got nothing to do with it. It’s more of a work assignment.”
“Lisa’s wedding is a work assignment to you? Just wait till she gets a load of this.”
“She knows. She’s the one who told me to invite Dennis in the first place and not because she was trying to get him and me together. Remember David Muller?”
“Of course.”
“As you know, he got off the hook while Jon Bostoff was made a scapegoat, and Lisa is not very happy about that.”
“So she wanted you to bring Dennis to the wedding so that he could apologize to the Bostoffs for the botched up investigation?”
“Would you just listen? Turns out Muller had accepted his invitation to the wedding.”
“You mean to tell me that after everything that’s happened, they still decided to invite him?”
“They didn’t mean to. His name had been on the original guest list, and somehow it was never taken off, so when the invitations were sent out, his went out by mistake. Still, I can’t understand how he could have accepted it. Lisa wanted me to bring Dennis along, thinking that Dennis might be able to get close to Muller and get some information out of him.”
“Doesn’t Muller know that Dennis works for the Treasury?”
“He might know his name, but not his face: they had never actually met. Dennis did all the prep work, but he was not part of the deposition proceedings; that part was handled by the lawyers in the Enforcement Division.”
“I see. So you chickened out and instead of asking Dennis you asked Laskin?”
Janet nodded. “At least that’s better than going alone. Besides, Laskin is sharp.”
“From what you told me, he sounds like an ace.”
“Be nice.�
��
“Not if it’s going to stand in the way of your happiness. In fact, I’ll be as mean as possible to get you off your butt and into Dennis Walker’s arms.”
***
David Muller entered the swanky interior of the Carlyle hotel on the Upper East Side. “How may I help you, sir?” The head waiter hovered by David’s elbow.
“I’m meeting John Francis,” Muller gave the alias that Cornelius Finnegan had told him to use.
The head waiter nodded. “Right this way, sir.”
David followed the head waiter through the dimly lit carpeted lobby into the restaurant. It was a little after six in the evening, and the dining room was mostly empty. David prided himself on patronizing New York’s most distinguished restaurants, but the Carlyle had escaped his attention until now. In his mind the establishment was obsolete. Only someone as socially unrefined as Cornelius Finnegan would choose a place like this for a meeting. But then again, unrefined or not, Finnegan’s powerful connections could not be underestimated.
“Here we are, sir.” The head waiter opened the heavy curtains that hung across the entrance into the private dining room, then quietly left.
David immediately saw Finnegan’s hefty frame behind the round dining table, but the primary object of his attention was the man seated next to Finnegan. The two made the most incongruous pair, with Finnegan resembling a giant spud, and his companion being as willowy as a reed.
“David, there you are!” Finnegan’s brogue filled the room.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” David replied in the crispest American diction he could master.
“David, I’d like you to meet my good friend Kevan Magee. Kevan, this is David Muller, a very capable and smart young man who also happens to be my daughter’s soon to be fiancé.”
David did his best not to wince at the introduction. If things went according to plan, there was a good chance that Finnegan would soon abandon his patronizing ways toward David. He brushed his hand against his jacket pocket, thinking of the brilliant plan he had devised to get rid of Finnegan and his homely daughter. Now, all he had to do was get Kevan Magee to talk.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Kevan,” said David and offered his most open smile.
Kevan extended his bony hand. “Any friend of Cornelius’s is a friend of mine,” he said in a voice that was as thin as his physique.
“What do you say we eat first and talk later? I’m starving.” Finnegan patted his ample stomach.
“Sounds good to me,” Kevan agreed.
“What will you be drinking, David?” Finnegan asked.
David glanced at the glasses that stood opposite Magee and Finnegan; he did not even have to guess what was in those glasses: eighteen-year-old Macallan was the only drink that Finnegan favored. “I’ll have a gin martini with a lemon twist,” replied David. He was not speaking out of spite; it was simply that the smoky smell of Macallan gave him a headache.
Finnegan burrowed his nose in the menu, licking his lips as he always did in anticipation of a meal.
David eyed the menu with indifference. Food was the last thing on his mind: he was hungry for far more important things. With the help of his lawyer, Tom Wyman, David had spent the past two weeks setting up a network of companies through which he could conduct the kind of trading activities that Finnegan had been hinting at—insider trading to put it bluntly. Wyman’s help did not end with a network of companies; he had given David a wonderful idea on how to end Finnegan’s clout over him once and for all. David patted his jacket pocket: inside it an iPhone was recording each and every word that was being uttered by Finnegan and Magee.
“So, Kevan, Cornelius tells me that the two of you go back a while,” David probed after they had placed their orders with the waiter.
Kevan nodded, pressing a napkin to his lips. “Yes, indeed.”
“We went to the same Catholic school up in the Bronx, St. Simon’s,” Cornelius cut in. “Kevan was the brain and I was the muscle—we made a damn good team.”
“Yes, those were good times indeed,” Kevan agreed.
“There’s nothing like sharing childhood reminiscences,” David remarked. By the looks of him, Kevan seemed to be much more suited to a religious vocation than that of a corporate board member, and David was beginning to have serious doubts whether Kevan would in fact be able to deliver the valuable information that Finnegan claimed his friend had access to.
“Remember the time when you had the brilliant idea to put a cockroach into Sister Myra’s chalk box?” Finnegan elbowed Magee. “The darn thing nearly got away, but I got it in there. It was right before the math test, too. I thought our math teacher was going to have a heart attack: there she was, reaching for some chalk, and the cockroach crawled right over her hand. Needless to say the math test was cancelled.”
“And the best thing was that we never got caught,” added Magee.
This time David’s laugh was genuine.
“And the time we put glue on Sister Agnes’s chair?” Finnegan’s ample frame quivered with laughter. “I tell you, David, there are enough stories to fill a book. Ah, the food is finally here—it’s about time.” Finnegan cast an impatient glance at the waiters.
Kobe steak was placed in front of Finnegan. David had opted for seared grouper, while Magee had ordered soft-shell crabs. “You call this a steak?” Finnegan eyed the waiter with indignation. “I can barely make it out on my plate!”
“I apologize, sir, but this is our portion size for kobe steak. Would you like another piece?”
“Oh, forget it,” Finnegan waved his fork. “Just bring me another plate of mashed potatoes and put some gravy on them.”
“Would pommes mousseline be all right, sir?”
“Whatever you call it. Oh, and bring us a bottle of Macallan so we don’t have to call for you every time our glasses go dry.”
“Certainly, sir.” With a bow, the waiter departed to execute Finnegan’s order.
“That does it, Kevan. Next time we’re going to Keens.” Finnegan cut into his steak. “Chewy like a piece of rubber,” he muttered between bites. “How’s your dish, David?”
David’s grouper was tolerable, but before he could respond, Finnegan switched his attention back to Magee. “What’s that you ordered, Kevan? Reminds me of the cockroach I put into Sister Myra’s chalk box.” Finnegan looked genuinely pleased with his joke.
Magee, who had been gamely attacking his dish, contemplated the last remaining soft-shell crab on his plate. “Indeed, there is a slight resemblance, but I would imagine that soft-shell crabs are much tastier than cockroaches although I have to admit that I never chanced to eat a cockroach.”
Finnegan chuckled. “That’s Magee for you: he’s always got a comeback for every line.”
David smiled in agreement. Indeed, his impression of Magee had undergone a complete transformation: there was much more to this Magee fellow than he had thought.
After they were finished with their main courses, Finnegan ordered a slice of cheesecake, while David and Magee limited themselves to coffee.
“So, Kevan, I think now is a good time to tell David about the purpose of our little get-together,” said Finnegan, licking the last bit of cheesecake from his fork.
Magee nodded, taking a sip of his coffee. “David, Cornelius has told me a lot about your financial expertise, but I hope that you will allow me to ask you a few questions.”
“By all means.” David did his best to put on the most genial expression.
“Let’s say a certain public company, let’s call it company A, is in merger talks with another public company, let’s call it company B. What do you think would happen to the shares of these companies if the merger were to go through?”
David suppressed his irritation. Was Magee questioning him on the rudimentary principles of financial markets? “Typically, once the merger is announced, the stock of the acquiring company would decline in price, while the stock of the company that is about to be acquired would app
reciate in price. Of course, that depends on the conditions of the merger. If the company is being bought at a discount—”
“It’s being bought at a premium,” Magee interrupted, “and a handsome one at that. And what would you do if you were to know about such information several days before the merger was to be announced?”
“I’d buy call options on the stock of the company that’s being acquired. This would require a smaller financial commitment than buying actual shares of the company and result in a much greater gain. Of course, I’d have to be sure that the information is reliable,” David added.
“It is ironclad, which is why it is imperative to proceed with great caution.”
“Oh, calm down, Kevan.” Finnegan poured himself another drink. “David is not a novice. He knows what he’s doing. Besides, as New York attorney general, I’ve got everyone covered.”
“I do not doubt you, Cornelius, but I do remember a certain investigation involving Bostoff Securities and Emperial hedge fund, the latter of which, if memory serves me correctly, David was the owner.”
Magee’s black, button-like eyes burrowed into David’s face; in them, David saw ruthless shrewdness. If anything were to go wrong, Magee would not hesitate to cut anyone’s throat, including Finnegan’s, in order to save his own neck.
“Like I told you, Kevan, I’ve got your back, just like I’ve got David’s. Who do you think put the kibosh on the Bostoff investigation?”
“I do not doubt your abilities, Cornelius. I am merely anxious to ensure that everyone’s interests are protected.”
“I know that, Kevan, and I give you my word that we can trust David. I trust the man with my daughter. Is that not enough for ya?”
Here, David felt a pang of guilt, as he thought about the microphone in his jacket pocket.
Magee took a sip of his scotch. “It is, Cornelius. The question is, is it enough for you?”
Noticing the exasperated look on Finnegan’s face, David decided to intercede. “Kevan, I understand that we just met, but I hope that Cornelius’s word will suffice until we become better acquainted. In the meantime, please feel free to ask me any questions you may have about my background or professional experience.”
