“I’ll be there Monday.”
I was there Saturday.
Ah, the view was sweet from the corner office on the forty-second floor. I was higher up than Bob Forrester, and he didn’t own the view outside his window. I owned a lot of mine.
On the streets far below, the people wandered through their small existences, and maybe they glanced up at the highest point in the city and wondered who was there. I looked down at them and I didn’t question why I was above them. Maybe I was finding the answer.
The room was worthy of its altitude. The desk was aluminum or steel, so modern it wouldn’t even be in style for another ten years- but I liked it. I would have liked anything in that room. The carpet was dark blue and the walls a light gray. The two interior walls, that is. On the top floor, the windows were ceiling to floor. Those two walls were all glass.
On the dove colored walls were beautiful framed antique navigation maps of the waters I sailed so often. What a marvel, that Pamela. I leaned back in the desk chair and just comprehended who I was. It took a long time.
And then, onto that cold metal plateau of a desk, I poured Melvin’s files.
After three hours I knew it all. Melvin had constructed his “special framework” very carefully. Four executives in my employ were the keystones. They were more crooked than snakes, very highly paid, and none of them had been on Fred’s list of people I needed to get to know.
Yet they were straight arrows compared to the kleptocrats masquerading as state procurement officials. The whole racket amounted to highway robbery. Literally, in the case of the Department of Transportation.
None of it surprised me. Seeing it in print nauseated me.
And what was I supposed to do with it all? For how long could I legitimately claim to be surprised? At the moment, I could sink the governor and all his cronies at the cost of putting my own Gang of Four in prison. The longer I sat on it all, the more I became part of it.
Governor Bright knew that. He knew this smoking gun would soon be covered with my fingerprints. I was only safe as long as I could claim to be innocent. If I didn’t use it soon, I never could. He didn’t believe I would anyway.
And Fred’s point was true-that the kingdom was brittle. I might take the governor down, but I’d be cracking my own foundation. Was I really enough of a leader to rebuild twenty or more companies into real, competitive, efficient businesses? Not likely. But was I enough of a leader to hold Melvin’s framework together, and did I even want to?
I chose sixty pages that were incriminating enough just by themselves to send the framework up in flames, made copies, and stashed them in my briefcase. The wad of originals I locked in my safe room.
Then I leaned way back in my chair again to survey the world beneath my feet. I closed the door in my brain on the closet full of skeletons. Well, even if I was seated upon a mountain of graft and corruption, the view was very nice, and I wanted someone to show off to. I called Eric.
“Hey, are you doing anything?” he said.
“I’m looking out my window.”
“What window?”
“Come and see.”
“Where?”
“Take the elevator to Fred Spellman’s office, but just keep going all the way up.”
“Cool, Jason. I’ll be right there.”
Why am I here? To have a great time and enjoy my wonderful life. I called Katie and asked her to meet us downtown for an early dinner.
When I let Eric in, the joy of brotherhood flowed between us like Niagara Falls, except with dollar bills instead of water. He sat in my chair and appreciated every ounce of wealth and power represented by that room as much as I had.
He pointed to the fifteen-by-twenty-foot space between the desk and the door. “Right there. You should have a Corvette.”
“For show. Right.”
“Or a Jaguar. Like some people have a pool table or a bookcase in their office. A Jaguar, on the forty-second floor.”
“You could probably spare one for me.”
His eyes lit up. “I could! I could get a new one, and you could have the old one.”
“A used car in my office?”
He leaned back. “Used by me. That’s better than new.”
There were no other chairs in the room, so I was leaning against the wall looking at him. “What would you do with your life if you weren’t rich?”
“I guess we’ll never know.”
“Sometimes I think I’d like to try it.”
“Philosophy makes my head hurt. Money is to spend, not to think about.”
My brother had a transcendent ability to indulge himself; it was the only profound thing about him. “Rule Number 87-a little pain is good for you.”
Eric shook his head in pity. “Where’s supper?”
“Across the street.”
We descended Olympus.
Nathan Kern called that evening, freshly back in his native habitat.
“Jason, this is Nathan Kern. I want to get together with you when you have an opportunity.”
“Sure. How was your flight? It’s a hard trip from Africa.”
“I stopped in Switzerland on the way back at the World Health Organization. So today’s flight wasn’t bad at all. And the time in Africa was excellent. Quite excellent. Very illuminating. This is a whole new type of program for us, and I want to tell you about it.”
“I’ll look forward to that,” I said, only half lying. “And, Nathan, I have a question. I wonder what you would think of putting Angela on the board.”
“Angela? On the board of the foundation? Why, Jason, I think that might be an outstanding idea. Have you discussed it with her?”
“She had doubts. If you called her, she could probably be talked into it.”
“I will. Certainly.”
“And maybe I could come by the foundation Monday. I haven’t seen the office.”
“I will be there.”
15
Life was so good that by Monday I was suffering from conflict deprivation.
I had the old reliable problems I could pull up at any time: all the corruption I owned; the governor, and now the senator, I was trying to own; Melvin’s murder, if it had been, and by whom. They were all just different chocolate chips in the same cookie.
But the sun was shining, and the cookie gently crumbled.
I pointed the Mercedes west, around town, to a gentrified semi-suburb, still recognizable as the rural village it had once been. Just past a very upscale neighborhood, I turned through a gate in the stone wall, marked with an immense but tasteful bronze sign mounted on a massive stone pedestal.
Melvin H. Boyer Foundation.
A small parking lot appeared, and the two-story headquarters it earnestly served. The spaces were marked, Mr. Hyde, Dr. Fitwell-Monoque, Dr. Grambling, Mr. M’fele, and ultimately, Mr. Kern. The second row of spaces, occupied by twenty or more less prestigious cars, was not marked. The staff no doubt.
I set my car in a space marked Visitor.
