“A helluva lot better,” he said, sitting back to take another look around the room. “Forget the percentages. Let’s just say it’s a hell of a lot better.”
A few of the inside directors ran divisions of their own—massive enterprises more like city-states than business ventures. They were the landed gentry of the corporation. Survivors of the big hike up the ladder. Obsolete, but secure for the balance of their working lives. Even so, they’d all made runs at me when it looked like my little division was generating a decent flow of cachet. None successful. Their faces were neutral.
“It helps to be small,” I said to the group at large. I was trying to tell the operating guys that George was doing this all on his own. I wasn’t looking to bite any elephants on the ankle.
“Yes, of course,” said the Chairman, “but profitable. Extremely. We like that.”
Assent burbled around the table. I took a sip of my coffee and sat back in my chair. It was late summer and a witches’ brew of auto exhaust, industrial fumes and sea-borne mist lay like a hot towel over the city. I looked at it through the tall walls of glass. As high as we were, there were even higher buildings that broke up what would have been a perfect view of the Hudson. Beyond the river, New Jersey was a distant, hazy lump.
Everyone down on the street was stripped down and crabbier than usual, forcing their way through the dense, malodorous air with stern, unforgiving faces. Along the horizon charcoal-gray clouds threatened thunderstorms. Against the dark backdrop a 747 making its approach to Newark stood out like a brilliant white bird.
“Sam, did you hear what I said?” George was asking me.
“About our profitability. Sure. It’s been pretty good.”
“No. About the opportunity.”
“Opportunity? No, I guess I didn’t hear that part.”
George frowned up at the ceiling.
“How’s the hearing there, Sam?”
“I guess not what it used to be.”
George dropped a stack of reports down on the table with a disdainful flourish.
“Well, that’s what we’re talkin’ about here, Sam. An opportunity. For the company. For you.”
“Ah.”
“No better way to impact shareholder value,” said Mason Thigpin, our corporate counsel, who was sitting across the table from me.
I tried to imagine Mason as a teenager, or even a college undergrad. He was about five years younger than me, but looked much older. His hair had retreated from most of his scalp, leaving behind a monkish ring of curly gray fuzz. He was at least thirty pounds overweight, which actually smoothed out some of the lines of his face before adding back a lot of extra years. He wore heavy horn-rimmed glasses. This intrigued me. I imagined him at the optometrist, picking out these glasses from thousands of possibilities, choosing, helplessly, the one pair that would most clearly confirm his allegiance to the soulless aridity of his calling.
I struggled to concentrate on what George Donovan was saying.
He was explaining to me the future of my division. It was expressed as an option, a possible course, as yet undecided, though everyone in the room understood the language well enough to recognize a done deal. Our corporate management was patterned after the early English monarchy. George needed the general support of the nobility, but each individual decision was unilateral and absolute.
They all smiled at me. All but Mason. They were pleased. I had accomplished great things. Recognition had been bestowed. A royal gift was being given. George folded his arms and leaned out over the table to receive my approval
Jason gave my shoulder an affectionate, congratulatory squeeze. Louise smiled with her lips pinched together. The tall woman who’d greeted me at the elevator came in with a tray of fresh coffee, causing a minor disturbance, so George asked me to speak up.
“I’m sorry, Sam,” he said, “I guess my hearing’s going south, too. What’d you say?”
Whatever I said, I said it again, but still not loud enough for Donovan to hear at the other end of the room. I wasn’t speaking to him anyway, but to Mason Thigpin on the other side of the conference table. He said something back, which I don’t remember either, though I think it’s in the DA’s file. I do remember lurching across the table and grabbing Mason by the fat Windsor knot he had cinched up around his throat. I remember pulling back my right fist and hearing Louise Silberg yelping in my ear.
It actually wasn’t that hard to find Jackie Swaitkowski’s place in the oak groves above Bridgehampton. You just had to count the driveways down from the big oak tree with the giant scar halfway up the trunk. I worked my way down the long dirt and gravel driveway and pulled the Grand Prix next to her pickup truck. I grabbed my coffee, tucked my cigarettes in my pocket and rang her time-off bell.
Marijuana smoke,
“Oh.”
“Hi Jackie. Got a minute?”
“Holy shit that door opens easy.”
“Sorry I didn’t call ahead.”
She scooped up a handful of blond mane and tossed it back over her head.
“You didn’t?”
“Can I come in?”
She swung back into the room without letting go of the doorknob, almost closing the door in my face.
“Sure.”
I eased through the opening and followed her into the living room. She was wearing an extra large flannel shirt, blue jean shorts and bare feet. She moved with deliberate care over to the stereo stack and stared for a few moments before finding and turning down the volume. Now it was barely audible, though it made the atmosphere in the house a little less demented.
She spun around and got a bead on where I was standing.
“What can I getcha?”
I held up my cup.
“Brought my own.”
“A roadie?”
“Coffee.”
“Cool.”
She took a few steps and launched herself over the big coffee table, clearing the mountains of papers and catalogs and landing butt down on the couch. It was too difficult a maneuver to have been unrehearsed. I took the land route and came around to sit next to her. She slapped my thigh.
“So, how you been? Still full of bullshit?”
“I guess. How’s your case?”
She slumped deeper into the couch.
“It’s going really well, goddammit.”
“That’s bad.”
“I’ll have to keep working on it. Killed by my own competence.”
She pulled herself back out of the cushions and searched the tabletop with her eyes.
“Ha.”
She found a slender, tightly rolled joint and stuck it in her mouth. When she spoke it jumped up and down between her lips.
“You want a hit?”
I took out a cigarette and a pack of matches.
“I’m fine with this.”
I lit us both up. Jackie consumed about half the joint on the first pull, her eyes and cheeks squeezed tight. The smoky aromas commingled and billowed around us on the couch. I wondered how much sin the atmosphere of a single room could absorb.
