Beauty: A Novel (19 page)

“Did the Wives have standing in the case?”

“Of course. We have standing in everything. It is what we do.”

“Did you or anybody else bring up the lousy fishermen? Were they really lousy?”

“They were worse than lousy. They were barely fishermen. They came from here, and they were the funny line for every joke on the harbor. They did things nobody could believe. All they ever caught were those researchers, which was another joke until what has happened. Oh. I see. Nobody ever did bring up these joke fishermen. But now you want me to find out about them. Am I right? As grounds for a motion to have the judge suspend her injunction.”

“Can you do it?” Carol asked.

“I know their names, and they are all in police records and in the harbormaster’s logs. These are official jokes. We could have a television series. And you know what else? The Wives have a lawyer who has been working on this and works cheap but good and knows everything and can go as fast as we can get him the records, which is less than an hour, and in this case, with the injunction causing material this and material that, the motion has whatever you call it.”

“Urgency.”

“Urgency. Excuse me. I have to go to the telephone.”

Carol went down the granite steps to the sidewalk and Mary, where she wasn’t chipped, was as blue as the sky had been that day on Easy’s boat.

Carol parked in
the truck turnaround out from the old plant’s loading bays. She admired Ben Garcia’s ride. He had Brembos and a new set of eighteen-inch low-profiles. When she was ready, she took a breath and dialed Dave Parks on her cell.

Parks said, “Tell me something good.”

“How close do we have to two million in ready cash with what Anna Rose dumped in yesterday?”

Parks said, “I beg your pardon.” He said it agreeably; but he still said it. He said, “You sound ready to use our toothfish money in ways I can’t imagine. Which could mean something good, if you aren’t at an airport.”

Carol laughed and said, “It’s real. I think I can make this judge’s decision work out, and we need that toothfish money for observers on the boats. The observers, and some theater if I can pull it off, are the bribe we offer the judge.”

Parks said, “We have a full two million plus necessary operating money for a while. We haven’t put anything out; it’s all cash.”

“Dave, I need a cashier’s check for two million. I’m not sure who to make it out to right now, but I hope I need it soon, so let’s get it immediately. Can you set that up, and I’ll call you right back with a payee? Fifteen minutes.”

“Two questions, Carol. Is your ticket one-way? And do you know it’s Saturday at the bank?”

“Ask your friends at Elizabeth Savings and Loan how friendly they are to people who can deposit what we deposited yesterday.”

“I’m pretty sure you’re not at the airport. Does that make me sufficiently cautious?”

Carol could tell he was on board, even if he was in the dark for the moment. Parks was a good guy and a good businessman and a quick study. She said, “If we’re going to buy back into the game, we’re going to do it now.”

“You never should have been an undertaker, Carol. You’ve got too much juice. Call me in fifteen for your cashier’s check. Just don’t call me irresponsible.”

Parks sang that part, which was good to hear even if it wasn’t his usual.

She said, “You’re already having fun again.”

“Is there a choice?”

Your Honor

B
axter was pissed that Carol had stiffed him, but it was not the end of the world. In some ways, he was proud of her. She knew she was making a shitty business decision, but she wanted that company and she was prepared to go down with it. Or not. Maybe she could pull something off.

Baxter had the kind of breakfast his wife no longer allowed him to eat at home. Then he called all sixteen members of the family to tell them he had irons in the fire. He did not get anybody working on discovering a stand-in for Carol’s company. He thought that if something good didn’t fall from the sky of its own accord in the next hour or so, he’d walk away like Carol had walked away but without consequences.

Then he saw a call from Carol coming in, which was very close to something falling from the sky. He didn’t answer and let two more of her calls go by. He picked up the fourth.

“I changed my mind,” she said.

He was eager, and he didn’t pretend otherwise. He said, “Carol. Perfect timing. We’re at a standstill over here. It was my fault this morning. It was early. You were distracted. I could have handled it better. I’m delighted you called. How can I make it more comfortable for you? Do we have a deal? One and a half times your cost? I’ve forgotten about the sea bass completely. And truth be told, Carol, I want you to work with me. I’ve followed you at your fish plant, and you’ve done great. You may also be having more fun than I am. But just because I’m taking a backseat in the firm doesn’t mean I don’t have interesting deals of my own in the works, and I want you to come back and work with me on those deals. Real work, with participation. No more burials. I’m putting all my chips out here, Carol, because I think I can get to bed early if I offer my dopes over here the right box of chocolates, as you called it. Are we on? I wouldn’t go this fast if I didn’t know that you know all my bullshit. I can’t tell you how glad I am you called.”

“I’d like two times our cost.”

He’d never underestimated Carol. She was dealing from weakness. So was he.

He said, “Oh, no. I can’t. It’s crazy. Holy shit, this. Holy shit, that. Blah, blah, blah.” He enjoyed negotiating with adults who knew what they were doing. It was more fun, if not more profitable, than taking advantage of all the poor bastards who thought they knew.

“Okay,” Baxter said. “You get two times your cost, but the clock is ticking, and if it ticks over, Carol, then life goes on and we never talked. Do we have our deal?”

“And I need you to get me in to see the judge for ten minutes.”

“There’s an
and
when I just gave you two times what you went in with two weeks ago? And why the judge? What does she have that you want? The judge smells like bullshit, Carol.”

Carol had something on another burner. Not necessarily bad for Baxter, however. He didn’t want to offer his belly to a knife Carol had behind her back, and he didn’t put the judicious stabbing beyond Carol, but he felt that if he got a commitment from her it would be a real commitment, and then the judge, the knife, whatever else was on her stove wouldn’t matter. If Carol was smart enough to lift some new sort of company right out of the ashes of this one, more power to her. Carol had tuned hoodlum cars in the back alleys of parts-plants Detroit. Carol had brains to go with her balls. Baxter waited for her to speak more about the judge, but he knew Carol was not going to elaborate until Baxter himself did some speaking; Carol had her back up.

He said, “And you want the judge today, I assume. Now. Is it really important enough to bring up before I deliver my box of chocolates? What for? You want to take a swing at her for pulling the rug out? That’s not like you.” Still nothing from Carol.

“No, you want to persuade her to reverse her decision. You’re not passing the most basic smell test here, Carol, which is definitely not like you, but interesting. The thing is, every coastal district congressman for three hundred miles has already tried to persuade her and failed, and you don’t have their weight. You are going to sell the company to me.”

He waited for a response. Silence. Carol MacLean was blossoming. That was worth coming up here for all by itself.

He said, “Even if I find somebody who can get me through to the judge, I’m all day in the middle of trying to herd all these unhappy people who don’t know business from backstroke into taking your company and giving me what I want. It shouldn’t be difficult, but families are murky. It won’t help to have to take calls from the judge and whoever guards her gate. I’m not going to mention to you that I’ll have to ask favors to reach the judge. But let’s get straight on the real question. Am I right that you’re selling?”

She said, “If talking to the judge buys you my company, your unhappy people get glad right away. When I start working with you, I’ll make it a point to collect favors only you can dole out.”

Baxter waited a moment as if considering before saying, “That’s all? That’s your best answer?”

“I’m selling,” Carol said.

Baxter was quiet until she said it again, firmly. “I’m selling.”

He said, “I’ll get the judge,” and hung up.

An American Picture

C
arol sat in her car with her foot on the clutch and clicked up and down through six quick-throw gears. This would not be the last time she spoke to Baxter, but it would be the last time Baxter would trust her. She was sorry, but not that sorry. She was proud of herself. She was fighting for her company’s life.

This was the plan: she would promise the judge two million dollars to pay for observers. Then she would call the fishing fleet into Elizabeth Harbor. The judge would show up at the harbor and make an announcement about the observers. She would change her decision again and let the fishermen fish. The judge would be someone who could make things work out, and she’d be a friend of the workingman and the ocean at the same time, on television. It was a perfect plan. It was a long shot.

Carol had been crossing lines since she left New York, and right now she felt as if they all added up to the line she’d just crossed with Baxter. Not a big line in most people’s scheme of things, but it was critical if her company was going to have a chance.

Carol started her car long enough to lower her windows. The funk of low tide, which she had already learned to savor, flushed Baxter out of her head.

She called Anna Rose.

She said, “It’s me.”

Anna Rose said, “Of course it is. We got the police records. The harbormaster already had a file of copies of the pages of the logs that we need. He reads them when he needs cheering up. By now the lawyer is delivering. He had been ready to file a motion but didn’t have good reasons. Also, for what good it will do, I have already talked to the congressman who matters, and I can talk again. From both senators, I have been called by the worker who goes to Harvard, the worker whose family knows the senator, the junior aide, and the middle aide. Next, either I get the senior aide or the senator. I have talked to the television and the papers, and they are ready when we have something. But Carol, everybody knows this judge. If you make her look bad, she will do things worse. She wants everybody to know she is in charge. If I were anybody who got nervous, I would get nervous about punching this judge. She is also running for governor. Did I already say that?”

Carol took a breath.

“I’m meeting the judge, and if your lawyer will fax just the records of those awful fishermen, I will talk to the judge about our motion.”

“And then?

“I have two million dollars that she can give to the regulatory agencies to pay for observers. I’m going to let her be the arranger of a big offer of good-faith, good-cause, good-science money from historic Elizabeth Harbor.”

Anna Rose was silent. The waiting, again. Carol could have been with Baxter.

Carol said, “No?”

“What is your no? You’re going to do it anyway, and you should. It is a great idea and it’s why we sold those toothfish. You knew we needed observers. Yes, Carol, but I’m trying to think what next. I am thinking we could still use a what next. She is running for governor.”

Carol laid it out as fast as she could. The judge running for governor only gave it more leverage. This was the kind of horseshit Baxter, from the day he was born, could imagine, and imagine doing, and do before lunch.

“I want to see if Easy and Buddy will bring their boats, and as many other boats as they can, into Elizabeth Harbor. You and the Wives of the Sea meet them. And the judge. The papers and the television stations meet everybody. We make as much noise as we can, and we give the judge a way to make everybody happy. On television. She can put independent observers out on the water, which she can paint as controlled science for the environmentalists. For the fishermen . . .”

Anna Rose said, “For the fishermen, the judge can suspend her injunction, and that means we can still get fresh fish into our plant. Elizabeth Island’s Best. Carol, you are saving your company, and you are saving my grandson his inheritance.”

Now, Carol thought, they just had to make it work. She said, “If Easy and Buddy are right about the observers, we get a long-term suspension of the injunction and maybe in time full reversal of her opinion on the amendment.”

“Easy and Buddy are right. But you see? You figured it out. I am not a bit surprised. And you got an appointment with the judge, which is a surprise. Only I have one suggestion to add and it is a great suggestion, because if we want to persuade the judge to change her mind, we have to go all-out. Have the boats come to Boston Harbor.”

Carol had thought Elizabeth Harbor. Anna Rose went right to Boston Harbor. Carol wondered if Anna Rose and Baxter would like each other.

It was a long shot, but it was a shot. She almost dared to hope that they could save her company. She did not dare to hope that Easy might come back.

“No,” Anna Rose said. “It’s more. Once they get in the harbor, they all come to the
Constitution
. With this judge, it would be best if she could meet the boats there, with us. And the television. She will want that. She is going to run for governor.”

“What’s the
Constitution
?”

“Carol. Are you first generation? It is your oldest Navy ship. Very famous. If the Coast Guard tries to keep our boats away, that is a good American picture for every evening news. If the boats can come all the way to the
Constitution
, that is a better American picture. I will get our Wives and extra wives, and we will wait for our fishermen. Do you think the judge will agree to the observers? I think she will. The boats that are far out, you won’t get them, but the boats that are not so far, and with them coming north and south, as well as west, full speed and in calm sea, in three, four hours you have got a full harbor, and I mean a full Boston Harbor. How soon do you see her?”

Baxter would never want to fail when he’d said he would “make some calls.” But that might sound vague to Anna Rose, so Carol asked her own question. “Does Buddy have a phone on his boat? I’d better start trying to bring the boats in.”

“You call Easy, too. Because listen, Carol. In my grandfather’s time and before, in Italy, in Sicily, sometimes fishermen died. And many times it was a storm, and sometimes it was that a fisherman wanted to die. A man goes out on purpose where he shouldn’t, and either he dies like he thinks he wants or God brings him back. If women want to die, they choose the wrong man. Men and women, it never changes. You hear me, Carol? Easy loves you. Everybody on the harbor knows, and he is a good man. If you don’t get him on the phone, tell me and I’ll use the radio. Then the whole fleet can hear, and he will decide to answer the phone after all.”

Carol said, “Thank you,” and took down both numbers Anna Rose gave her, Buddy’s and Easy’s.

She had to put the fishermen and their boats in motion before she talked to the judge, and if the boats were going to arrive in time, she had to get them started now. She had to have faith that Baxter would get her in to the judge. She didn’t think anymore about what she was doing with Baxter’s faith in her. She wondered if, once she reached the judge, the judge would go along. The judge had made a big decision with the injunction, and made it publicly. If the judge shut Carol down and the boats were already headed for Boston Harbor . . . Well, Carol thought, she didn’t have a choice.

She called Buddy, and told him what was happening. He said, “Let me call you some other boats. Everybody’s on the water. Everybody’s on the radio, dying over the amendment. Yeah. Good for you, Carol. I’ll get ’em moving.”

“I was hoping you’d call Easy,” she said.

She hung up, and with the smell of the harbor, with the understanding that Buddy had been speaking from his boat, Carol felt that she was on the water herself. Strangely, she didn’t feel sick.

She studied her plant out the windshield. She knew, better than her dad, about half-assed outfits that struggled and died competing with factories that had proper systems and sufficient scale. She was glad she’d gotten the Cyclone fence pulled.

She wasn’t going to call Easy. Buddy was going to call him. Carol wanted to hear Easy’s voice, but she didn’t have any illusions that he would suddenly want her back. When he got on the elevator to leave her, he knew that she cared more for her company than for anything that mattered to him. If she could find a way to keep her company and keep Easy fishing out of Elizabeth Harbor, she would do that and try not to want more.

He could help. She called him for that. She would tell him it was for the harbor and for his boat, and for the investors, and the town, for the people who would work in the plant.

She dialed his number, and before she spoke, he said, “Hi, Carol.”

She remembered how much she loved his voice. She wanted to be in her plant, and him to be working his boat out of the harbor, and every night that he was in port, they could touch each other. But she couldn’t say these things.

Carol didn’t recognize her own voice, and she spoke even faster than she’d spoken to Anna Rose. “Buddy’s going to call you. I think we may be able to get the injunction suspended and observers on the boats. A lawyer is filing a motion right now, about the terrible fishermen who drove the boats out with researchers to see what was caught. And I’m going to offer the judge the toothfish money to pay for real observers going out with real fishermen, and I’m also trying to make news with your guys’ boats and with Anna Rose’s Wives. Buddy will tell you. It’s all the boats coming to Boston Harbor. Right now. Please come.”

He said, “Carol.” He sounded as if he wanted to say more. But he didn’t.

Instead, she said, “If we get the amendment suspended, could you still fish out of the harbor and bring your fresh catch to us?”

He said, “Carol,” and she didn’t dare wait for more. She couldn’t bear to hear him say no.

She said, “I think this can work. I should hang up. I’m sorry. Buddy will call and tell you. Please, Easy. Come to Boston Harbor, and then if we make it work, come home to Elizabeth Harbor.”

She hung up and put her head down on the steering wheel and concentrated on the touch of his voice, and the touch ran away from her. She said aloud to her steering column, “It’s a nice little plant. Good for me.”

She got Parks and Annette in Parks’s office and told them about the judge and the boats and the Wives and the media and the observers and the check and the motion to suspend the injuction. Then she said, “Let’s make that check out to the Fund for Observers of Northeast Fisheries. Does that sound workable? Have we got the check? If things don’t pan out, can we tear it up?”

Annette said, “Why do we have to do it so fast?”

“I’m not sure we do; maybe we don’t, but it feels like we have momentum, and I’m counting on getting in to see the judge. Like it or not, wheels are rolling.”

Parks said, “Creedence. Remember Creedence?” He hummed a few lines.

“You’re feeling good, Dave.”

“I’m getting there.”

“And you have the check.”

“We’ve got a check waiting for a payee, and we’ve also got a plant ready to run on Monday morning. Where are you?”

“Where do you think I am?”

“I think you’re out off the loading dock, in blue jeans and a flannel shirt.”

“I’ll call you as soon as I know I can use the check. Thanks, Dave.”

She hung up and held the phone in her lap and waited for Baxter. He would come through quickly, because he was in a hurry, too. He might have to give away something he liked, but he assumed he was getting something he wanted. He must have guessed she was doing a deal. In any case, there was no going back. Carol would have to keep lying, and lying better, and she was ready for it.

She was sure that the boats, a lot of them, were on their way to Boston Harbor, and she believed she was right to be sure. She didn’t know whether Easy was coming.