The Hazards of Good Fortune

by Seth Greenland

  “Can I get a tattoo?” His daughter Chloe had come down sleepy-eyed for breakfast. The short skirt she wore barely concealed her pudendum, and a midriff strained to establish contact with the spandex waistband. “A little one?”

  “Shush,” he said, intent on the television.

  She shrugged and opened the refrigerator.

  Although hearing his more prominent cousin’s name in the media unfailingly triggered negative emotions, he could never stop listening or reading, or in any way tune out Jay’s superior achievements for long. But today was different. Something terrible had happened. There had been an accident. A basketball player in critical condition. Jay injured. And there were legal problems of some kind. Had he heard the word “arraignment”? Arraignment for what? What had his cousin done?

  “It’s Carmen’s day off,” Marcy said. While Franklin was staring at the television, his wife had entered the kitchen dressed in canary yellow workout clothes for her indoor tennis game.

  “Shush.” he said.

  Marcy did not like being told to pipe down. “What?”

  “Quiet!”

  “Why are we out of orange juice?” Chloe asked.

  Having failed to get her husband’s attention, Marcy tried once more: “Franklin, what?”

  “Is everybody deaf?” Chloe again, head to the side, weight on one leg.

  Ignoring his daughter, Franklin pointed at the screen, and Marcy followed his gaze. Seeing her parents mesmerized, Chloe joined them. For the next minute, they watched as the most wild-eyed version of the previous night’s events was breathlessly recounted: “Horrific accident,” “airlifted,” “clinging to life.”

  “Did Jay kill someone?” Chloe asked. This possibility seemed to penetrate her usual languor and excite a level of interest she rarely displayed. “Fuck.”

  Marcy, who forbade her daughter from using profanity, was too distracted to notice.

  “No one’s dead yet,” Franklin said.

  “Should you call him?” Marcy asked. When Franklin did not immediately reach for a phone, she asked what he was waiting for. Franklin had not bothered to tell her about the Asian situation or Jay’s suspicions. He had no desire to talk to his cousin right now, but explaining exactly why this was so to his wife was a prospect even less appetizing. He snatched the phone off the cradle on the kitchen counter and punched in Jay’s number. To his relief, Jay did not answer.

  “It’s Franklin,” he said, attempting to convey sympathy to the voice mail. “We heard what happened and we’re very worried.” Hanging up, he glanced at Marcy to see how his performance had played. Although Franklin typically blustered through most situations, he cared a great deal about how his wife viewed him. He wanted to be perceived as a man of honor and feared her reaction should his mischief come to light.

  “Better him than you,” she said. “But it sounds awful. Here, gimme.” Marcy took the phone and began dialing Nicole’s number (“Never mind I’m not crazy about her, she’s family”), but after she pressed the area code, it became apparent that she couldn’t remember it.

  “Chloe, my phone’s on the night table. Be a doll and get it.”

  The girl rolled her eyes and slinked off.

  “What was D’Angelo Maxwell doing in Bedford?” Franklin asked.

  “When did Jay get back from Africa?” Marcy answered.

  The two of them ruminated over these questions for several seconds.

  Chloe returned, handed Marcy her phone. She called Nicole, who did not pick up. Marcy left a brief message concluding with, “Call us if there’s anything we can do.”

  “Where was she when all this was going on?” Franklin asked.

  “What do you think, we’re in a book club together? I haven’t talked to her since that fakakta Seder.”

  “I had no idea Jay hung out with the players at his house.”

  “God forbid he invites us,” Marcy said.

  “You want to hang out with a bunch of overgrown schvartzes, be my guest.”

  “I don’t like that word.”

  “All of a sudden you’re so politically correct?”

  “Well, whatever was going on,” Marcy said, “I’m sure Nicole knows all about it.”

  That statement, with its disreputable implications, caught Franklin’s attention.

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m not saying anything.”

  “Is somebody going to make egg whites?” Chloe asked, again peering into the refrigerator.

  Marcy kissed Franklin goodbye, asked her daughter if that was what she planned to wear to school (Chloe: “Your outfit is totally ghetto, and I’m the one getting busted?”), reminded her to use sunscreen (Marcy: “You’ll thank me when all your friends have melanoma”), and headed out to her tennis game.

  Chloe presented a carton of eggs to Franklin.

  “Dad?”

  He had forgotten his daughter was in the room. “What?”

  “Can you make my scrambled egg whites?”

  While Chloe sat at the kitchen table and finished her homework, Franklin stood at the stove separating the yolks from the whites and thought about Jay. Franklin had not covered his tracks as well as he thought and Jay’s recent trip to South Africa had provided a reprieve during which he intended to devise a new plan. He had spent much of the past week huddled with a forensic accountant and a lawyer trying to determine if there was a way to reverse engineer the books that would not result in leaving him vulnerable to being charged with committing massive fraud. Unfortunately, there was not. The lawyer had given Franklin the disquieting news that his best course of action right now was to shield his twin sons from legal culpability in the event Jay were to file charges. Last night’s events had the potential to change the equation. He still had no idea of the extent of his cousin’s injuries, or the depth of his legal troubles. Whatever they were, the man was teetering on his plinth. Whether he would topple and shatter remained to be seen.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The early morning sun peeked over the rooftops of Long Island City and painted sparkling daubs of orange and gold on the swiftly flowing East River as the helicopter carrying D’Angelo Maxwell swept over the 59th Street Bridge south to the NYU Medical Center. Along with head trauma Dag had suffered internal injuries that included a bruised kidney, and several fractured ribs, one of which had punctured a lung. A team of orderlies was waiting when the pilot landed on the riverside helipad, and as the blades whirred overhead, they rushed the helicopter, removed Dag, and hustled him directly into the hospital, on to an elevator, and to an operating room where a surgical team was ready to take over.

  When the gurney bearing the unconscious athlete entered the operating theater, a tall man with dark brown skin and an erect, almost military bearing was pulling on surgical gloves. He was the head surgeon, Dr. Theo Bannister (Cornell University basketball, All-Ivy 1980-81). Assisting Dr. Bannister were another brain surgeon and a surgical resident. A nurse had, on Dr. Bannister’s request, placed Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks in the CD player. Dr. Bannister stepped to the table, and the resident placed a drill in his hand. Like many surgeons, Bannister enjoyed music in the operating room and made his choices based on where they were in the course of whatever procedure he was performing. Once he completed the drilling and the more delicate work commenced, he would request Brahms.

  When a sympathetic nurse at Northern Westchester Hospital informed a distraught Trey Maxwell that they were going to fly his brother to the city and there was no additional room in the helicopter, he, Babatunde, and Lourawls climbed into their Escalade and drove to Manhattan where they arrived just before dawn. Too upset to eat, Trey and Lourawls had been camped in the airless visitors’ lounge texting friends and relatives and waiting for someone to provide information about Dag. Babatunde sat nearby, thumbing through a Bible someone had left behind.

>   In front of the hospital on First Avenue, a media Woodstock was camped on the sidewalk. Reporters from NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX, Univision, Lynx, and TMZ, along with all of the local New York stations, scrambled for information. The foreign television contingent included crews from England, France, Germany, Japan, Israel, and Italy. There were radio reporters and newspaper reporters, bloggers, and fans. Everyone looking for someone who knew something, and no one talking.

  The series of procedures the surgical team performed took five hours. Once completed, the patient, swathed in bandages, lay unconscious in the intensive care unit hooked up to a breathing apparatus, monitors, tubes for intravenous feeding and hydration, and a catheter, attended by a team of nurses.

  In the visitors’ lounge, Trey, Lourawls, and Babatunde were watching a live CNN report about Dag when a commanding black man in surgical scrubs approached and asked Trey if he was D’Angelo Maxwell’s brother. Trey jumped to his feet and introduced himself. Babatunde and Lourawls huddled nearby.

  “I’m Dr. Bannister,” the man said. His voice was like water. “I just operated on Mr. Maxwell.”

  “How’s my boy doing?” Lourawls asked. When Trey admonished him to shut up and let the doctor talk, he apologized and fell silent.

  “Your brother sustained several serious injuries and is still in a coma,” Dr. Bannister began. “The good news is the swelling in his brain is going down.”

  “A coma?” The word battered Trey.

  “A medically induced coma,” the doctor said. “It will help speed the healing.”

  “Can I see him?”

  “Not for a while. He’s in the ICU, and his body is very susceptible to infection right now.”

  Trey felt his throat tighten. His chest thudded. Dr. Bannister’s forthrightness did little to comfort him.

  “My brother’s in a coma,” he managed, “and I can’t see him?”

  “Someone will keep you posted and assuming his condition improves—”

  Trey interrupted, “What do you mean ‘assuming?’”

  “Mr. Maxwell, your brother, as I was saying, is not out of danger. We’re hopeful that he’ll recover but with injuries that involve significant head trauma—right now the prognosis is uncertain.” Here he paused, weighing his words. “I don’t want to alarm you, but D’Angelo is not out of danger.”

  What did that mean? He might die?

  Trey took a step back from the doctor. Lourawls looked toward the ceiling and dragged his palms over the stubble on his cheeks. Babatunde closed his eyes and prayed.

  Trey asked, “But he’s gonna live?”

  “We hope so.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Your brother is getting the best care in the world, Mr. Maxwell.”

  Trey chose to be reassured by this. He regarded Bannister and for the first time registered the doctor’s height. Their eyes were on the same level.

  “You play ball?” Trey asked.

  “In college,” Bannister said. “I’m a big fan of your brother’s. We’re going to do all we can to get him back on his feet.”

  “Word,” Trey said and offered his fist, which the doctor bumped. Seeing this unexpected aspect of the interaction, Babatunde and Lourawls both offered their fists and received reassuring dap from Dr. Bannister.

  “Let’s assume he’s gonna be okay,” Trey said. “He gonna be himself?”

  “Head injuries are unpredictable,” Dr. Bannister said.

  Babatunde ground his teeth, muttered, “Please, Lord,” to no one in particular. Lourawls wrapped his arm around Trey’s shoulder, said, “Dag’s gonna be all right.”

  Trey knew this to be true because the theme of his sibling’s life was Triumph, and what was this but another challenge. He rubbed his neck and thought about the cross tattooed there. It made him feel like a hypocrite since he was not much of a Christian what with all the weed, and the drinking, and the fornicating, not to mention his complete inability to find Jesus relatable. What was the point of praying to a dead white man? But at moments like this, when his soul was in torment, Dag’s brother longed for faith. He needed God to intervene.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The desire to know whether Dag had survived consumed Jay, but no one would tell him anything. He still did not have his phone, so he had not heard from Bebe. It was impossible to know how much trouble awaited him. He wore a red polo shirt with Bedford Police Golf Outing 2011 stitched across the breast in yellow thread. Given to him by a sympathetic cop, the size was XXL. It hung on him like a tent.

  “Sorry, Mr. Gladstone,” Officer Hartzell said, “but I gotta put the cuffs on.”

  Jay had just arrived at the county courthouse, and Hartzell was the New York State court officer escorting him to the holding cell adjacent to the courtroom. He was overweight and sported a comb-over.

  “Are you worried I’m going to escape?”

  “Regulations.”

  He handcuffed Jay and led him down a cinderblock hallway to a bank of elevators. They rode up several floors then disembarked. They walked down another hallway before Hartzell opened a door and beckoned Jay inside. He entered a chamber that contained a holding cell in which several prisoners waited patiently on benches under the vigilant eyes of another guard, a sour-looking black man with freckles twice as dark as the rest of his skin. The second guard signed the paper on Hartzell’s clipboard and handed it back. Jay took a seat on a bench in the cell, grateful that his fellow prisoners had chosen to ignore his arrival.

  “Mr. Gladstone,” the new guard said. His manner was friendly. Jay looked at his nametag: Caldwell. “How about you get me some tickets to a game?”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Jay said. He wanted nothing more than to be allowed to go home and take a shower. Horror at what he had witnessed and what he had done enervated him, and his entire body was sore. He realized with some amazement that the recent course of antibiotics seemed to be working because whatever had been going on in his prostate area no longer seemed dire. Now, if his doctor would only tell him he didn’t have cancer.

  Ten minutes later another court officer appeared and called, “Gladstone!”

  When he entered the courtroom, Jay had the unwelcome sense of stepping on to a stage. As a first-rate speaker who usually welcomed the chance to regale an audience, the shame that overcame him was nearly crippling. At least he was no longer wearing handcuffs. The court officer gestured to an enclosed area to the side of the courtroom that held several chairs and indicated Jay should sit down. Averting his eyes from the gallery, he complied. Judge Daryl Rice, a black man in his sixties with wire-rimmed half-glasses and a full head of white hair, was arranging a trial date for a young woman wearing tight jeans and a fake fur jacket, a female public defender on her flank.

  The isolation of the pen beneath the high ceiling of the courtroom reinforced the feeling of inconsequentiality he had been experiencing in the last several hours. Other than jury duty years earlier, Jay had never been in a courtroom, but the bench, counsel tables, empty jury box, and jammed gallery—he knew it was jammed after finally stealing a glance—were familiar from countless movies and television shows. That he found himself a participant in this environment, rather than a spectator peering at it on a plasma screen, lent the morning a surreal cast.

  He recognized several beat reporters who covered the team, along with members of the non-sports media. Surround­ing the reporters and correspondents was the herd, drawn like ancient Romans by the timeless drama of a prominent citizen brought low. It was sickening.

  The woman with fake fur and her attorney stepped away from the bench as Jay heard the bailiff call his name. From somewhere behind him, an angular, older gentleman appeared. A fringe of salt and pepper hair surrounded his bald dome, eyes the pale blue of Russian winter. The bespoke gray suit he wore hung on a tall frame. A patterned tie bisected a white Brooks Brothers s
hirt. Black oxfords, polished. In a sepulchral voice that held decades of secrets, Herman Doomer inquired how he was faring. “Never better,” Jay said, the mild sarcasm meant to show that he had not broken down. The attorney assured his client this bit of “housekeeping” would not take long, and he would have him out of here shortly. Jay was greatly relieved by Doomer’s presence. The wise counsel he prudently offered had guided Gladstone family interests for years, and this morning the low-key certitude of his manner conveyed the unspoken assurance that he would be Jay’s Virgil.

  “Do you have any idea how D’Angelo is doing?” Jay asked.

  “I’ve only heard what the media is reporting.”

  “Which is what?”

  “They’re saying he’s in critical condition, but no details.”

  Doomer guided Jay to the bench where Judge Rice presided. There he introduced himself with little fanfare. The judge nodded and turned to Jay.

  “Mr. Gladstone,” Judge Rice said. “This is a surprise.”

  “I can assure you,” Jay said, “No one is more surprised than I am.”

  The red shirt with the yellow stitching that spelled out Bedford Police Golf Outing 2011 in cursive would have made him feel underdressed on a weekday morning in most circumstances, but standing in a courtroom he might as well have been naked. Doomer stood at Jay’s right. There was now another man in front of the judge.

  He said, “Louis Pagano, Your Honor, representing the State of New York.”

  “This must be a significant case if Ms. Lupo sent you to the courtroom for the arraignment, Mr. Pagano.” Was the judge bantering with Pagano? Jay was not encouraged by the familiarity between them. “What are the charges?”

  “We’d like to introduce initial charges today, Your Honor, and hold off on the others pending the outcome of the victim’s treatment.”