Bulls Island

by Dorothea Benton Frank

  So many times I wished J.D. and Adrian could know each other, with Louisa and everyone else left completely out of the picture. But there was no way to finesse that. And to admit to Adrian that I had told him so many lies? I simply did not have the courage. There was going to be a huge price to pay for all my lies. I knew it.

  A glass of wine seemed like a brilliant idea just then.

  I pushed the revolving door of Del Frisco’s and stopped at the maître d’s station, population four, to see if Pinkham and McGrath had arrived. They had not, so I asked them to say that I would be at the bar.

  The bar area of Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steak House was as classic a New York bar scene as the imagination can conjure. Custom-tailored suits, “geek chic” glasses, and gelled hair were four deep. Beautiful young muffinettes, tanned and enhanced in every way their budgets could afford, squirmed and wiggled their way between the suits, searching for a life partner with a big wallet or at least another round of mojitos. Life in Manhattan was all about the accessories. You might live in a rat hole of a fifth-floor walk-up, but you wore a good watch and owned at least one Hermès tie or scarf or a decent knockoff from Chinatown.

  In the world of cocktails, appearances mattered far more than acoustics. The bar was long and gleaming, but the whole area was loud. It was so loud you could hardly hear yourself scream.

  I cozied my way through this mass of human ambitions and carnal longings and found myself next to a pair of cuff links that were attached to a smiling handsome fellow of Mediterranean origin. I smiled back. He seemed to be alone or perhaps he was waiting for someone, as I was.

  I caught the bartender’s eye and said, “Sauvignon Blanc?”

  “Coming right up.”

  “Oh, no,” the cuff links said. “A classy gal like you should be drinking champagne! A champagne cocktail! You know, with a raspberry or something like that floating around in it?”

  The seasoned bartender who had seen two trillion pickups in his day looked to me for a reply.

  “We got strawberries,” he said. “No raspberries.”

  I could see that he was mildly exasperated and didn’t have all day, and it wasn’t his responsibility to broker my relationship with the cuff links, so I said, “Sure. Why not?”

  What was the harm in one drink?

  “What are you having?” I said.

  “Martini.”

  I did a double take at his double old-fashioned glass: a martini is usually served in a tulip stem.

  “I hate them sissy glasses,” he said with a a funny little laugh, packaged and couriered to Del Frisco’s all the way from the worst neighborhood in Irvington, New Jersey. “So, please allow me to introduce myself.”

  The bartender put the glass holding a strawberry in front of me and filled it slowly, and I raised it to the cuff links.

  “Don’t tell me. Rolling Stones? You’re Keith Richards?” I said. He was anything but Keith Richards. I was biting the insides of my cheeks to keep from laughing. Who was this two-hundred-pound lollapalooza?

  “What? No, I’m Vincent Michael Anthony Braggadocio, but my friends call me Vinny.”

  We shook hands and I said, “Elizabeth. It’s nice to meet you.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, too. Oh! I get it!” It had dawned on him: “Please allow me to introduce myself” was the first line of that song the Stones had recorded decades ago—hence my Keith Richards allusion—and a grin spread across his face. “You’re a smart one, aren’t you? I like brainy broads. You got a last name, Elizabeth?”

  “Yep.” I took a sip of the champagne and put it down. “McGee. Actually, my friends call me Betts.”

  “So? May I call you Betts?”

  “If you’re buying me a drink, I suppose you’re a friend, of sorts. So sure, call me Betts.” Cuff links is the kind of guy I played with. He was safe.

  “Is there a Mr. McGee?”

  “Yep. Two.” His face fell. Lawsamercy, this man was really a two-year-old. “My father and my son.”

  He smiled at the ceiling and then back to me. “Got a sense of humor, too. I like that. Besides, there’s no ring. Gals like you would wear a wedding ring if you was married.”

  “You’re right.” I giggled, thinking he must have learned to speak English watching old Jimmy Cagney movies. He was a handsome peacock, though. Deeply tanned but not too swarthy, beautiful brown eyes, thick black lashes, dimples, and perfect teeth. Manicure and pinkie ring. Okay, the last two details weren’t so great—in fact, they be the go-button for a spew of spontaneous vomit—but then my imagination took flight. I wondered if he waxed his back or anywhere else? Did he wear his pinkie ring to bed? He had big hands and I wondered if that meant anything. You know, a correlation? What did his apartment look like or did he live in New Jersey in a glass-and-chrome house? With six kids? A humorless wife? And a violin case, home to something other than a Stradivarius. “You’re not married? Come on. A guy like you?”

  “Nah. Got close once or twice. But I just ain’t the marrying kind. I guess it’s best if you know that right off the bat, so to speak,” Mr. Cliché said.

  “Why? Ah, come on, Vinny. Are you already planning to break my heart?” Too much.

  “No, baby, I got other plans for you.”

  Suddenly the bar area was thinning out. People were being escorted to their tables or leaving for dinner elsewhere. Vinny slipped off his jacket, hooked it over his finger, flipped it over his shoulder, and leaned back against the bar. Next, he crossed one leg over the other in such a way that one glance toward the protrusion directly south of his belt left little to the imagination about the, um…correlation? Let’s just say he obviously thought he had reason to brag. He threw back the rest of his drink, jiggling the ice around for long enough to afford me the opportunity to observe that his abdominal muscles were rock hard. His shirtsleeves enshrouded the muscular perfection of his biceps. And he liked to chew ice. He was quite the specimen—a combination of tanning salons, casino savoir faire, and he clearly held a Ph.D. in phys ed.

  “Plans?” The inside of my cheeks had to be bloody from all the gnawing I was doing. “What kind of plans?”

  “You meeting somebody?”

  “Yeah. Business dinner.”

  “You got plans later?”

  “No. I mean…”

  Laughing, he placed his glass on the bar, extracted a fifty-dollar bill from a wad the size of a deck of cards, put his jacket back on, and handed me his card. I frowned a little.

  “Hey! Whatever. You either like what you see or you don’t. Call me. I’ll be free later.”

  “Thanks for the drink,” I said.

  “See ya, sweetheart.”

  Then my new friend Vinny, with an exit waltz worthy of a swashbuckling pirate, walked away and disappeared into the night. My jaw was hanging. What the hell was that all about? He was more brash and vulgar than any of the trashy underlings at ARC, but he was so cocksure, pardon the expression, that the entire episode teetered between hilarious and gross. If one of my friends had described this Vinny fellow to me, I would have called her a liar. I couldn’t wait to tell Sela.

  All through dinner my mind kept wandering, returning to Vinny. I was fantasizing about a well-dressed, overpumped, shiny-fingered, probable thug. What was the matter with me?

  “Betts? You with us here?”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said, and took a bite of my crabmeat cocktail. “Sorry. I was thinking about the subprime mortgage mess.” Good one.

  “Oh, yeah. What’s our exposure there…something like ten billion, more or less,” McGrath said. “Not quite that much. I started shorting the CDX back in February to hedge our position.”

  “Well, the market can’t hold. The Commerce Department just reported another huge downturn in housing. And what about all those adjustable mortgages in the middle-income market? As soon as the banks adjust the rates up, forget it! Two points and all hell’s gonna break loose. I think we ought to start dumping that stuff,” I said. “Can I have a li
ttle more wine, please?”

  “Sure,” David Pinkham said. “Sorry.”

  “No problem. Thanks. So? Do we have a clue how bad the hemorrhage could get, how much is out there in subprime and ‘no-doc’ loans and how much money is adjusting up and when? I mean, how much is out there and who is holding it?”

  Pinkham and McGrath stopped talking and eating and stared at me.

  “A lot,” Pinkham said. He turned the color of ashes. “I’ve been thinking about it, too, and trying to get some better research on it. Betts is right, you guys. We’re in too deep for my nerves. I think we ought to dump.”

  “Talk about guts for the business?” McGrath said, and thumbed in my direction. “Scary.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  I left the restaurant a little before nine-thirty and decided to walk home. Should I call Vinny? What was I? Crazy? I’d call Sela instead. I’d call Sela and she’d tell me to call Vinny. I could hear her voice in my ear. The man thinks he’s some hot Italian lover? Maybe he is! Call him. Oh, a little fun is harmless, I told myself on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-eighth Street. And, sure that I was indeed losing my mind, I scoffed at caution, pulled out my cell, and punched in his number.

  “Yo,” he said on a speakerphone. “This is Vinny.”

  I know, hard to believe. But that’s what he said.

  “Vinny? It’s Betts.”

  “Two hours, eighteen minutes. Took ya long enough.”

  “Don’t be such a wise guy.”

  “Where are you? I’ll pick you up. I’m in my car.”

  Within minutes, after much hoisting and pulling, I was in the passenger seat of an enormous Chevy Suburban, listening to Andrea Bocelli crooning his little heart out, and opening the window slightly as Vinny’s Eau de Too Much was causing my throat to close up.

  “So, where are we going?” I said, hoping the answer wasn’t straight to his bedroom. I needed to gear up for that occasion, should it present itself. Ever.

  “Brooklyn. The River Café. I figured let’s have a look at Manhattan from over the river.”

  “Oh!” That was a relief. “Well, great idea. I’ve always wanted to go there.”

  “You’ve never gone to the River Café?”

  “Honey, I’ve never been to Brooklyn.”

  “What? You’re kidding me, right? How long you been here? And where’re you from anyway? I hear something southern over there.”

  “Nope. Not kidding. Almost twenty years, and Atlanta, Georgia.”

  “You’ve probably never been to Jersey either.”

  “Yes, I have. Look, I don’t have anything against Brooklyn, but why would you go there if you didn’t have a reason? And, FYI, I fly out of Teterboro all the time.”

  “Teterboro? Well, well! What kind of a big shot have I got here?”

  I giggled. “I don’t own the plane; my company does.”

  “Oh, I see. But you didn’t answer my question. What do you do for a living?”

  “Private equity, hedge funds, that kind of thing. Boring stuff. You?”

  “I got my fingers in a lot of pies. Hotels mostly.”

  “Yeah? Where?”

  “South Beach, boutique hotels. Very cool. You’d like ’em.”

  We were passing Lord & Taylor and my mind began to race. South Beach. Mafia. Chevy Suburban. Didn’t Tony Soprano drive one of these? That’s television, I told myself, not reality. Plenty of nice people drove Chevy Suburbans. Still, he had a manicure, didn’t he?

  “Isn’t that a lot of overhead? You know, housekeeping, constant maintenance, landscaping, liabilities? I’ve always looked at the hotel business and thought it would be tough to earn enough for all the effort it takes.”

  “Special events make money. You limit the guest rooms so it’s always a little bit difficult to get a reservation. You know, the cachet of staying in a place and all that. Then you gotta have a pretty big restaurant with a brand-name chef and a big bar…that type of thing. Trust me; the orange is worth the squeeze. Besides, labor’s dirt cheap in Miami.”

  “Bad boy. Don’t tell me you’re running your business with illegal aliens.” I pretended to be shaken by the news.

  “No. I got Harvard graduates changing the sheets and scrubbing down the showers. Whaddaya think?”

  “Right.” Vinny Whatever-his-last-name-was was so stereotypically mafioso I was waiting for Al Pacino to pop up from the backseat with a piano wire. “So why are you here? I mean, do you live in Miami, too?”

  “Palm Beach. I got a gorgeous place there. If you’re a good girl, maybe I’ll take you down there sometime. I keep a place here ’cause I like New York and the family’s here.”

  The family. Interesting.

  “You mean like your siblings?”

  He looked over at me, knowing exactly what I was thinking. “Yeah; them, too.”

  “And what does your family do?”

  “They got a little business in South Jersey.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s good.” Atlantic City. I knew it. “And so you stay in Miami because you just want your space?” Space to launder money, I thought.

  “Yeah, I went to Miami U, and after graduation I never really left. I love all that sunshine. Hate the frigging snow.”

  It was a crazy conversation filled with dangerous innuendo and I had been put on notice that I could play with Vinny but there were risks. Real risks. I had never met anyone like him in all my years of casual dating in New York.

  We passed over the Brooklyn Bridge, and in less time than it took me to reapply lip gloss, a parking attendant was trying to help me gracefully down from my seat in such a way as to prevent my dress from sliding up to my waist. I made a mental note to take my car the next time—if there was a next time.

  The hour was late and the dining room was only sparsely filled. Vinny knew the manager, who rushed over when he saw us.

  “Frankie, sweetheart! How are you?”

  Vinny and Frankie actually kissed each other on the cheek. My imagination expected men in sunglasses and black clothes to appear and stand by with one hand in their armpit in case they had to defend Vinny’s life. What a thought!

  “Why don’t you two sit by the window—sit anywhere you want—and I’ll send you over something special.”

  “Great idea,” Vinny said, and took my elbow to lead me to the table. “Thanks, Frankie.”

  It was a perfect summer night and the light show of Manhattan’s twinkling skyscrapers opposite us was spectacular. The occasional boat floated by and I had to admit it was a terribly romantic spot.

  “Beautiful here, isn’t it?” he said.

  “Yes, it is.”

  A waiter appeared with an ice bucket on a tray and two wineglasses. In the bucket was a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. Apparently, Vinny wanted to please me by ordering a wine that I liked. I took that as a good sign.

  “Know what, Betts?”

  “What’s that?”

  “You shouldn’t be getting in cars with strangers. I mean, you don’t even know who I am.”

  “I’ve got a pretty good idea who you are.”

  “Yeah? Well, I know more about you than you think.”

  The waiter poured out two glasses of wine; we touched the rims and took a sip.

  “Like what?”

  “Like you live at 540 Park in a classic six, that you have a teenage son, that there’s never been a husband, and that you drive a beat-up old car. You work for ARC, you are well respected, and there’s not much happening in your private life. How’s that?”

  I was flabbergasted. And completely unnerved.

  “How do you know all that?”

  It was hard to believe those gorgeous eyes belonged to someone from the world of organized crime.

  “Google,” he said, and laughed. “And a couple of lucky guesses.”

  I smiled, not knowing whether to believe him or not.

  “Oh, and by the way, you lied about Atlanta. You’re from Charleston.”

  He winked.
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  CHAPTER SIX

  J.D.’s Gone Fishing

  Dawn. I was wide-awake. Wide-awake like it was three o’clock in the afternoon. I went to the window of our bedroom and looked outside to see what kind of a day it would become. Steam was rising from the grass. The brown patches on the lawn seemed to have spread overnight like a virus, slowly but surely devouring everything in its lethal path. The day would be brutal, but long ago I had learned how to navigate the heat. Dress light, drink a lot of water, stay inside during the middle of the day. How about just stay indoors in general? It was August in the Lowcountry of South Carolina. Of course it was hot. And with the kind of work I did, I didn’t have the luxury of staying indoors all the time. To tell you the truth, heat was like anything else—you just got used to it.

  I glanced at Valerie curled up in the bed in her pale blue eye mask and pale blue negligee and wondered if she was happy with her pale blue fluff of a life. She could not have been. Not at any deep level, anyway. Valerie had probably stopped thinking about happiness a long time ago. She would never have admitted it, but I thought she lived in a constant state of stress and worry that if my mother could do so, she would vote her out of the family, or that I would run away with a girl who could give me children. I wasn’t going anywhere. That’s not how we Langleys were wired.

  I dressed quietly and went downstairs to make coffee. I loved this time of day best, before the world woke up and aggravation wound its way to my door. The pot dripped slowly and the air was filled with the rich smells of coffee from somewhere in the mountains of South America. I breathed deeply and told myself that despite my complaints, I was still a very lucky man.

  It was time to get in my truck and go down the road to the mailbox to collect the morning papers.

  Goober and Peanut were sleeping in their pen outside, but when they sensed my approach they roused, yawned, and began to bark.

  “Shhh! Calm down, boys! Everyone’s asleep!” I opened the gate and let them out. “You boys want to fish this morning? What do y’all say we go get us some bass?” I scratched them behind the ears and gave them each a dog biscuit. “Come on, get in the truck.”