Offerings (17 page)

Jack had the look of an elderly man wandering through a train station in a strange city, having forgotten for the moment both where he was and where he was scheduled to go, more than a bit frightened at the reality he was losing control of the world around him. His breathing was shallow.

“Jack, we can get through this.” She needed to hear those words as much as Jack did.

“I’m counting on you, Kate. I don’t have any rabbits left to pull out of my hat.” He ran his finger across the windowsill, and then, he smiled. “And yet.” He paused. “I’m not entirely certain I can explain why, but I have a sense you’re going to surprise us both.”

There was something in the way Jack expressed both his need and his faith in Kate, that when he reached over and gave her hand another squeeze, the gesture nearly brought her to tears.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Peter was in the pool when Kate arrived home at around seven. It had become his place of refuge, the one place where no one could call to complain about lost fortunes, remote places in China, what might have been, or how dare you and Kate put your selfish interests first.

The pool was shrouded from the neighboring properties by evergreens planted in the thirties. Peter hadn’t bothered with a suit. He was long-limbed and cut through the water without effort, flipping at each end in a virtually splashless turn he had perfected as a moderately successful high school swimmer. Kate stepped out of her shoes and stockings, pulled her skirt above her knees, sat on the edge of the pool, and put her feet on the top step.

Peter stood in front of her. He lifted his goggles to the top of his forehead. “Steve Reed called here about an hour ago. I take it the information you stumbled across concerning Steve and Ed caused quite the dust-up.” His voice was detached. It was as though he was reading a part he didn’t want to play. He didn’t attempt to kiss Kate or to stroke her bare legs.

Kate was uncertain where Peter intended to take the conversation.

“Reed is out. Ed is off to the side.” There wasn’t an ounce of triumph in her voice. “What did Steve want?”

“Just to tell me the reason you left Greene Houseman was you were caught having an affair with Andrew Butler. He was both quite detailed and graphic in his description. Trips you took together, nights you said you were caught in the city for work, but stayed at his place. Times. Dates. Everything run through his expense account or yours. It was quite the catalogue.”

Kate knew in that instant she should have done more than drop Steve’s threat casually into the conversation as though it were a comment about the weather. She hadn’t done enough to prepare Peter for this moment.

“And?” Kate summoned every muscle in her body to remain calm.

“I thanked him for the call and told him I presumed you let the cat out of the bag on his malfeasance. I also told him his words might have had more resonance if he’d told me before he was implicated in a market fraud.” Peter’s comments were a balm to Kate. “He seemed quite disappointed I didn’t react more violently.”

“Good for you. I told you he was going to call with these allegations.”

Peter removed his swimming goggles. He put them on the side of the pool. He put both of his hands on the stone coping and lifted himself out, took a towel off the wrought iron chair at the side of the pool, wrapped it around himself, and lit a cigarette. Kate had badgered Peter to stop the habit for years.

Peter was in no hurry to say anything. “Actually, Kate, you didn’t tell me. You said Reed was going to call me and say you were sleeping with Andrew Butler and any number of stories to get you to go along with his plan for how to deal with this family and the painting. You didn’t say he’d be able to reconstruct so many dates you stayed in the city or the names of the hotels where you traveled with Andrew. Reed obviously has a friend inside Greene. As, apparently, do you.”

“That comment is unkind. And unfair.”

Peter merely shrugged his shoulders. “I wasn’t quite prepared for that specificity. But you bankers certainly know how to conduct diligence.”

Kate came to the table. “You didn’t believe any of Reed’s story, did you?” She was afraid to prolong the conversation by sitting down.

“I don’t know what I believe anymore. But the one certainty in my life at the moment is that I’ll be halfway around the world for the next year or so, which means we’ll both have plenty of time to figure out what this all means.”

“Did Steve tell you he told me you were having an affair with Mindy Patterson at the same time I supposedly was having an affair with Andrew?” Peter looked surprised to hear the name of his CFO. “He offered to give me the same detail about times and dates the two of you met so I could confront you. The man threatened to stop at nothing to get me to go along with his plan for how to deal with this family in Barcelona.”

That question at least drew a bit of humor out of Peter. “I couldn’t afford Mindy even when I had money.”

Peter used the towel on the back of the chair to wipe some water from his ear. “Honestly, Kate, whether you slept with Andrew Butler is the least of my concerns at the moment.” That comment hurt more than Kate wanted to confess.

“I need to put another couple hundred thousand in to keep the lights on long enough so the Chinese decide if they want to buy us, and I’m not sure I have the stomach for battling with you over that. But without that infusion the only thing left of the place is a fire sale and a bunch of lawsuits and even my closest friends asking if we sandbagged the Amigo deal to get you a leg up at Drake and then let the only buyer we could find walk because we weren’t prepared to keep the lights on long enough to see if they’re for real.” He paused. “That is, to the extent I still have any friends.”

“There was no Amigo deal.”

“That’s almost beside the point, Kate. People who want to believe I used them for my own benefit are convinced otherwise. There’s no shaking the story. Even Cass has his doubts.”

“At least you shouldn’t.” Kate waited a moment for Peter to agree with her, or for a gesture or a smile of acknowledgment.

A moment became a bunch of seconds in which Peter said nothing. It would have been so much simpler if Peter believed Steve’s claim about Kate and Andrew. There was at least a playbook to follow on how couples are supposed to react to charges of infidelity. Dishes are thrown. Tears are shed. Obscenities are screamed. But her lack of a relationship with Jack Carpenter seemed to be far more toxic to their marriage than her lack of a relationship with Andrew Butler.

“I know how much you’re hurting over Ascalon, Peter, but the idea of throwing still more of our money at a problem with no apparent end makes me crazy. Putting that much more into Ascalon makes it that much harder to hold onto the house, especially with everything so tentative at Drake. I can’t say yes, but when I look at how pained you look, I fear I can’t say no. I wish you’d never asked me the question in the first place.”

Peter lit another cigarette. He let his hand linger on the table on top of his lighter. Kate was afraid to reach out for his hand, in case he should pull it away for good.

TWENTY-EIGHT

Kate walked to the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator. Two artichokes sat untouched from the night before, on a round-cut glass platter with a sheep etched in the middle. She and Peter had bought it together in a small antique shop on Candlemaker Row in Edinburgh. They built their lives on the bricks of these memories. Whenever they entertained, it seemed as though each object they placed on the countertop or on the table evoked a story that in no time had the two of them interrupting each other as a new and brilliant recollection sparked.

Peter had gone into the solarium, and sat on the overstuffed easy chair where he loved to nestle with the children to read them a story. His bare feet were propped up on the ottoman. He was reading the Truman biography Kate had given him for Christmas years ago and sat unopened while they both were absorbed in what they thought was the building of their future.

She went into her office. The room was warm with pastels and chintz, but it seemed cold that night. She sent an email to Chris Franklin as much to preserve her own sanity as to move the deal a step closer to whatever conclusion it was destined to achieve.

Chris:

I’ve had some preliminary feedback from the book. As I feared would be the case, we’re meeting significant resistance to the offering at the $11–13 range due to the relatively small number of hard assets. While the projections are impressive, what interest they’re generating is below $6. That probably won’t raise enough money to meet your needs. Attached are two scenarios showing the offering with and without the painting on your balance sheet. Let’s talk.

Kate

The ring of the telephone was jarring. Chris Franklin’s voice surprised her, both in the speed with which he answered her email and in the fact he never had called her home before. His manner was direct. “Kate, I’m not a happy camper out here. I must confess to being confused as hell about the email you just sent me.” The tone of his voice startled her. She needed to proceed cautiously.

“Chris, how are you? We haven’t talked in person for a while.”

Chris wasn’t interested in chatter. “Kate, what’s this all about? How can we go from such a rosy picture to this?”

“Rosy picture? You’ll have to translate.” Kate longed for a conversation with someone where they weren’t talking past each other.

“Steve Reed emailed me no more than four hours ago and told me everything was falling into place, that it looked like we could hit the market at twelve without the painting on our balance sheet, but he was taking a step back from the project and leaving it to you to bring home.”

So Peter wasn’t enough of a target. Reed had to have a parting shot at Kate through Chris as well. Kate was angry that Clive missed the detail of cutting off Reed’s email account. She cradled the phone between her ear and her shoulder so her hands would be free to send that directive to Drake’s technology chief.

Kate recognized the unvarnished truth as her only ally. “Chris, you’ll hear about this soon enough. You may as well hear it from me. Steve was fired this morning. I found out some things about the way he’d handled some deals in the past that were more than a bit on the shady side. He probably sent you the email to get in between us because I was the precipitating factor in his termination. It’s embarrassing to admit all that, but those are the facts. Steve lied to you and now you know why. I can’t do anything other than to apologize on behalf of the firm for his having used you like this.”

Chris was silent. Kate hoped he was absorbing what she’d said and not looking up Andrew Butler’s phone number.

“Listen, Kate. I’m not going to ask for the salacious details. I’m going to be selfish and ask you to tell me what I’ve got to do to get some fuel in my engine. Straight up. I know you’ve been out there trying. Can I get this offering done? If you can’t do it, is there a shop that’s better suited? You owe me that much.”

“No question, Chris. I owe you that and more. What I’m telling you is grounded in what the market is telling me. I don’t have a hidden agenda. Steve Reed and Ed Roth were caught doing something the SEC will be all over. If you can trust me on anything it’s that Drake needs this deal as much as you do. If there were a painless way to get it done, I’d be the first one to tell you. I’m sure you’re not hearing anything different from Greene or you already would be well down the road with them.”

“Where do we stand with this family?”

“The meeting in Barcelona was a disaster.” Kate explained what Steve had done to Marta, the threatening email from the family to go public. “I’m convinced now the only option is to offer up the painting with no strings, as I suggested the last time we were together, and to hope for the best. I wish there were better alternatives, but I’ve run out of ideas. And if these people agree to meet with me, I need you to be there.”

Chris hesitated. “That’s way more than I bargained for, Kate. You heard my father’s story. It’s hard enough for me to live with that part of my history without looking into the eyes of the victims.”

“I’m sorry to put you through this, Chris, but there is no other way.”

Chris spoke after some time. “I don’t know, Kate. I hadn’t counted on this.”

Kate heard Peter puttering in the kitchen. She opened the door a few inches, in the hope he might be walking toward her office. But he walked past without slowing a step or looking in her direction.

Chris continued when Kate said nothing. “I wasn’t responsible for your first meeting, Kate, but now you’re asking me to fix whatever you did. I just don’t know.”

Implicit in the eleven-million-dollar loan was the sense they were in this together, that both would do whatever was necessary to pull this deal off, but there was nothing in writing about asking Chris to confront his worst fears as part of the bargain. If Kate knew a lawyer or any other kind of shaman in the exorcism business, she would have hired one long ago.

AUGUST

TWENTY-NINE

Mack returned from camp all piss and vinegar and brown as a nut. He grew an inch, put on five pounds, and walked around the house flexing his muscles and asking Peter to feel the guns his arms had become. When they raced each other in the pool, Mack now made it almost the entire length without taking a breath.

Sarah, on the other hand, was more reserved. She had few stories to tell of friendships made, no new best friends to visit before school started. She said almost nothing about her time at camp. Even more troubling, her cello sat in its case for three days. It was Kate’s job to find out what was wrong.

Kate knocked lightly on Sarah’s door. Sarah was lying on her bed in white shorts and a yellow top. She had thin, strong legs like Peter’s mother.

Sarah had a little girl’s pink bedroom in Wilton, but by the time they moved to Scarsdale she’d been to Carnegie Hall a number of times and wanted the same colors as the chamber music hall. Her walls were beige with white trim. Framed sheet music from Mozart and Bach and other masters filled the walls. Her music stand and chair were to her left, in front of the windows. Usually, when Sarah wasn’t practicing she was listening to a recording. Her room was eerily quiet.