Offerings (9 page)

“Relax, Kate. Nobody is suggesting anything be fabricated. You did exceptionally well to find that receipt, particularly in such a short time. All we’re asking is that you now dig a little deeper with some reasonable diligence to see whether you can find the heirs of the man who bought the painting.”

Ed looked at his watch. He rose from the table. “Unless, of course, you have something on your plate at the moment that can be of more immediate value to Drake Carlson.” There was no need for him to announce the meeting was over. Clive followed him out of the room.

Steve waited a moment. He ripped the top page off the pad. “Here’s a few things to say if you’re ever asked about how much good faith we exercised trying to find the painting’s owner.” Kate read through it quickly. It was a script Kate could follow about how she wasn’t content to merely post the question on the Internet, but felt compelled to search through the municipal records of Karl Hirsch’s hometown and wasn’t it so terribly heartbreaking that despite her efforts, she was unable to trace any family members beyond the nineteen thirties?

“I’m supposed to jump on a plane to Linz?” Kate didn’t bother hiding her disgust with the absurdity of the idea. “What do I do when I get there? Go up to strangers on the street who speak a different language and ask if they’re related somehow to Karl Hirsch?”

“You’ll figure something out. You’re the queen of research. And, don’t kid yourself, Your Majesty. You’re about to undertake a search that shows the poor man’s family is gone.” It had taken a little more than two weeks for the veneer of civility covering the competition for Ed’s job to be stripped away.

“Do I burn this paper after reading it or does it self-destruct?”

“Don’t fuck with me.”

“It was a question, Steve. A goddamned question.”

“Listen, don’t get on your high horse. You’re not the only one around here who knows something about research.”

“Is that supposed to mean something?”

Steve stood up and moved his shoulders as if he were ready to strut. “Let’s just say I have a number of friends at Greene Houseman. They’re saying some interesting things about you and Andrew Butler.” He sipped from his coffee, timing his words with care. “Kate, he’s old enough to be your father, for God’s sake.”

“As long as we’re talking about sex, Steve, go fuck yourself.”

Steve shrugged off Kate’s comment. “I’m not surprised, seeing as it was the Internet’s worst-kept secret your husband was screwing the cute little CFO of his start-up. Payback isn’t such a bad thing. Keeps the marital books balanced in a way.”

“Stop all this talk this instant. I’m not going to dignify your pulling something out of thin air. I don’t traffic in rumors.”

Steve spoke before Kate got to the door. “Don’t traffic in rumors? What business have you been in all these years? If it weren’t for rumors and innuendo we’d all be bussing tables. Some stupid fuck in Israel blows up another car bomb and Halliburton gains a dollar a share. A plane blows a tire on takeoff, the world assumes some guy named Abdul shot it out, and the bottom drops out of half the stocks on the index.”

Margaret poked her head in the door and told Steve that Ed was waiting for him at the elevator. She had been Ed’s assistant in the days assistants were called secretaries and in the days secretaries were called girls. To her, all of Ed’s subordinates were just that.

“Tell the mutual fund investor who’s going to have to work until he’s ninety to make up for what he lost over the past couple of years that stocks don’t move on rumors.”

Kate moved closer to Steve so that Margaret couldn’t pick up what she was about to say. “Peter won’t believe you, so don’t even bother going there.” Ordinarily she would have meant it and maybe even slapped Steve’s face. But that was before the reality of the past few weeks burst the bubble.

Steve kept coming at Kate the way any predator circles its wounded prey. “I thought you just said my comment was too undignified to merit a response, but I see I may be on to something. Let’s leave it at this: if you’re so certain of your husband’s reaction you have nothing to fear.”

“Call him yourself.” She scribbled Peter’s cell phone number on the edge of his notes. “You don’t frighten me, Steve. Not one bit.” The only way to mask her fear was through aggression.

Margaret knocked on the door to remind Steve that Ed was waiting.

He acknowledged Margaret and then looked at Kate. “There isn’t a guy on the planet who’d get a kick out of hearing his wife worked her way up the corporate ladder with her boss’s dick in her mouth.” He turned just before he reached the conference room door. “Enjoy your flight.”

FIFTEEN

Kate waited an hour before calling Andrew Butler. They agreed to meet at Delmonico’s at one.

They made small talk until the waiter came to the table. Andrew ordered Oysters Rockefeller. After Kate ordered the chopped salad, he said, “I’m glad you called. We miss you at the Auld Sod. How are you enjoying your new life?”

“There are good days and bad.” Kate slowly rubbed her right elbow.

They were sitting in Andrew’s booth, directly under a charcoal drawing of a woman sitting in front of a partially opened drape at the back of a theater box. Her dress was cut in a low v shape on her back. She had a fan in her right hand. The drawing was muted shades of black and white. In the only colors on the piece, her lips were pink and her cheeks were slightly tinted with rouge. Her body faced to the left. Her head was turned directly toward the viewer.

“Jack is a true gentleman in every sense of the word.” Andrew sipped his iced tea. “Was it my job to warn you about Ed?”

Kate lowered her eyes, embarrassed to look at Andrew.

The woman in the picture had no name, at least none anyone could identify. Andrew called her Felicity, his guardian angel. Kate and Andrew and two very nervous senior vice presidents from Axtel were having drinks in this booth on a rain-soaked October evening in 2004 while they waited for the board of Visionet to react to their hostile tender offer of eleven dollars a share. Not more than five minutes after Andrew told them not to worry, that Felicity was looking out for them, his cell phone rang, the board made a counteroffer of twelve-fifty that was accepted on the spot, and Greene made eighteen million dollars for its efforts. How could Andrew sit anywhere else in the place?

“At times, I think of Ed as my third child. The one who throws the most tantrums,” Kate said. They both laughed, Andrew at the observation, Kate at herself. “Everything good on the nineteenth floor?” Kate started naming names of the M&A group, asked about spouses and children and favorite pets. “They’re a terrific group of people. I really cherished being part of the team.” She gave Andrew the perfect opening. All he had to say was Greene would be even better if she would consider returning; some sins can be forgiven. Kate would rip Steve’s script into small pieces and follow Andrew willingly down that path.

“I know it could never happen, Andrew, not this soon, certainly. But if the opportunity ever presents itself.” Andrew wouldn’t say yes and he wouldn’t say no. Wall Street, like most insular societies, is built on the giving and calling of favors. No need to shut doors. No need, though, to throw a life jacket to someone who left of her own volition. Kate had worked shoulder to shoulder with the man for a long time. She knew Andrew spent his political capital judiciously.

Andrew would be sixty in October, although he didn’t look it. He was fit and tanned, but then anyone sitting in a corner office at the intersection of Wall and Broad streets can afford fit and tanned and the bespoke suits and Turnbull and Asser shirts. He didn’t hang on longer than most for the money. He was long past needing a monthly draw or a big year-end bonus. What kept Andrew in the game was the certainty the next card drawn would be just the one he needed to complete his flush, as if those sorts of things happened by Divine Right. He craved the action.

“My inbox is filled with resumés from top guys at shops up and down the street. I spend half my day saying no to people who’ve been my friends for twenty years. Tough world right now.”

Kate was yesterday’s starlet.

At least Andrew forgave Kate her ambition. When others at Greene asked the inevitable
how could she
question, Andrew said anyone with a chance to take over an established platform with a free hand to grow the business would jump at the opportunity. Andrew owned five percent of a horse that came in second in the Kentucky Derby a few years back and now was standing at stud at Calumet Farms. He always said a good banker, like a winning jockey, looks for an opening through the thundering herd and accelerates toward daylight. How could he be criticized for grooming a winner?

“Can we talk a bit about the note you gave Peter? It’s convinced him every person he meets is a process server. He’s making us both crazy.”

Andrew was dismissive. “It’s something Larry asked me to deliver.” Larry Wolf spent seventeen years as Greene’s general counsel throwing bombs at any client, customer, or competitor who might threaten it. The strategy worked more often than it failed, so he saw no point in stopping. “Once things started heating up we looked at all of your time and phone records and emails. Unless you ducked into phone booths to talk to the man, we’re quite comfortable with the sequence of events.” He paused. “Are there any more phone booths these days?”

Andrew broke off an edge of the bread on his plate. “But the threat of that claim you mentioned is one more reason to go slow on what you just hinted about. Whoever is behind the shareholder noise would have a field day spinning tales about why you left Drake. Larry directed me to avoid saying anything that might be discovered, so let’s end the conversation there.” All the men in her life (save, perhaps Mack) seemed convinced the world was listening in on her every conversation. Maybe they were right.

Kate knew Andrew well enough to know if she pressed him for more hope about her returning to Greene, he’d do nothing but repeat the answer he’d just given ten different ways. For now, at least, there would be no escaping the quicksand of Drake Carlson. “Putting aside the question of a threat by the shareholders, what’s your crystal ball tell you about Ascalon?”

Andrew shook his head. “It’s on life-support, but with a minimal pulse right now. Our patent lawyers say we can push back with a counterclaim, but we’ll be long dead before the case is resolved. And so we’re turning over every rock trying to find someone to outbid the Chinese. We’ve gotten a few nibbles but I wouldn’t go long on the stock, even with the five Peter put in last week.”

Kate felt as though all the oxygen in her lungs rushed for cover. She hoped she misheard or Andrew misspoke, hoped anything other than the prospect that Peter lied to her.

Every part of her wanted to move. Kate wanted the waiter to hurry with their meals, or her phone to ring with some emergency so they would wish each other well and leave the restaurant. But it was another forty-five minutes of small talk, stretched over coffee, before Andrew kissed her goodbye and headed back toward Greene’s office and Kate was able to call Peter’s cell phone. It was starting to rain. Kate had no umbrella. She stood under the overhang of a building a block from the restaurant, surrounded by perhaps a dozen smokers, launched into the conversation the minute Peter answered, not bothering either to say hello or to mask either her sense of betrayal or her abject fear.

“I just had lunch with Andrew Butler. He told me you put five hundred thousand dollars into Ascalon. I thought you told me the other night you and Cass each were putting in three. Tell me Andrew misspoke, Peter. For the sake of everything we’ve invested in each other, tell me he was wrong.”

“It happened while you were overseas. Cass got caught in a margin call. He’s a bit illiquid at the moment. I advanced the funds.” Peter sounded certain he’d done nothing wrong.

“How could you?” The smokers under the building looked at Kate as she raised her voice. She moved toward an isolated space near the edge of the overhang. Rain was splashing into her open toes. “How in God’s name could you do that without asking me?”

“You were in Basel.”

“For God’s sake, Peter. That’s as lame an excuse as Mack has ever come up with. You could have sent me an email. Or called me. They have phones in Basel. WiFi. You didn’t want to ask me because you knew what my answer would be.”

She moved away from the smokers, who were taking in her every word. “How could you do this to me? How could you lie to me like that?” Kate was more angry than hurt.

“Kate, please. I admit I surprised you, but I didn’t put us at risk. Cass is good for it. He’s even told his lawyers to draw up some papers to have my extra share backed by some stock.” Peter’s blindness to the depth of their dilemma seemed as intentional as it was foolish.

“Ascalon stock?”

“I was going to tell you all about it tonight. I’m not hiding anything from you.” It was good that Peter wasn’t within the range of Kate’s fist, for it was balled so tightly the ends of her fingers were turning white. Violation wasn’t too strong a word.

“And the rest of the money? Tell me, Peter. Tell me you used the rest of the loan to pay down our debt like you said you would. I need to hear you tell me that this instant or I’m going to burst.”

“I stuck to our deal, Kate.”

“No, Peter. Our deal was three. Not a penny more.”

SIXTEEN

Mack was shooting baskets when Kate got home. Sarah, in her room, was tackling algebra. Peter was sitting at the computer in the kitchen next to a half-empty glass of red wine. It wasn’t like him to drink alone.

They didn’t kiss. She didn’t touch his shoulder or the top of his head. They’d have to pull out of this place in their marriage gradually. Kate flipped through the mail in the Gien bowl.

“What’s that?” Peter had a picture of a tall wooden tower that looked Japanese. Maybe Chinese. He likely wasn’t planning their next vacation.

“A thousand year old tower outside Shouzhou. It actually was built without nails. And there’s calligraphy all over the wood.” He faced the computer. “Want some wine?”