The Last Refuge (37 page)

“I’m getting promoted for punching our chief counsel in the nose? Now there’s a company worth working for.”

Barry was the only one who enjoyed the thought.

“In front of the whole board of directors,” he added. “But that’s not why. The president of TSS will lead the transition team, and his prime role will be selling the living hell out of the idea to the buyers, our shareholders and your people.”

“Chief cheerleader.”

“After George Donovan.”

“I guess he’s more willing to overlook Mason’s nose that Mason is.”

“Mason is a team player.”

The words conjured up an image of Mason Thigpen that would never survive outside the imagination.

“So, what’s option two?” I asked.

Barry sat back in his chair and tapped the working end of his ballpoint pen on the table.

“You take a sabbatical during the sale period and refrain from commenting on the division, the buyers, the deal or anything relating to the corporation as a whole. To anyone at anytime.”

“Keeping Mason in a forgetful mood.”

“You’ll retain your full salary and benefits. After the sale, your role will be up to the buyers.”

“Is their chief counsel bigger than ours?”

Barry let that one pass. Being much bigger than me, he could afford to.

“I’ve got a third option,” I said. “Tell Donovan to go fuck himself. Mason can do what he wants.”

Ben didn’t seem to like this option, though his partner probably did. Appealed to his blood lust. Barry stayed neutral.

“Then you go to jail,” said Barry.

“One punch? No priors? I don’t think so. Be a juicy court case, though. Press’d eat it up. Meanwhile, I’d have plenty of time to work on my memoirs. All about my life running the division you’re trying to sell. Should interest the buyers.”

Barry listened without giving up anything. He had plenty of poise, I’ll give him that.

“So,” he said, “I guess we got our horses out of the barn where we can see ’em.”

He kept smiling and tapping the pen on the table, which got to be so annoying I finally reached over and held his wrist. When I let go he stuck the pen in his pocket and folded his arms over his chest.

“Sorry. Nervous habit.”

“Understandable. But calm down. I know what we’re doing.”

That cheered him.

“Good. Let’s hear it.”

“It’s simple. I quit. I’m quitting because I’m against the sale. Why I’m against the sale is nobody’s business
but mine. Not another word from me on the subject. Unless Mason puts up a stink, then all bets are off. You writing this down?” I asked Ben. He reflexively grabbed a pen and started writing.

“Put it in proper language,” I said, “but nothing fuzzy. We’re only doing this once.”

“I’ll have to go back and see how this flies,” said Barry.

“Do what you want. I really don’t care. I don’t care what happens to me. I don’t care what happens to your company. I cared about my division, but that’s gone. Everything’s pretty much gone. I’ve got nothing to lose.”

Ben had stopped writing while I talked.

“Hurry up with that. I want to get the hell out of here.”

He looked at Barry who nodded his head. Ben drafted something and slid it over to Barry, but I caught it halfway. The wording was close. I borrowed a pen from one of the security guys and made a few edits. Then I gave it to Barry.

“I just simplified a little,” I told him.

Barry read it over several times.

“It’s clear, I just don’t know if they’ll agree.”

I swiped Ben’s pad and wrote out a fresh version without all the scratch-outs. Then I wrote out a copy. I signed both.

“Here’s yours, I’ll keep this. I’ll pick up my stuff on the way home. Unless you don’t want me to, in which case, you keep it.”

I looked at my watch.

“This time of day I should get there in about forty minutes.”

Then I stood up to leave. The two security guys stood up like a shot and looked over at the lawyers.

“You guys should see me out,” I said to them, then left. They followed a few seconds later. The elevator played Haydn on the way down. I tried to talk to them about baseball, but they maintained their implacability. They stayed with me all the way to my car, then watched me leave the parking garage. When I reached the street I dropped all the windows and let the steamy, malodorous air of the City bust into the car. I stopped at a bodega and bought my first pack of cigarettes in twenty years, a six pack of beer and a fifth of vodka.

I sang along with the radio on the way up to White Plains until the vodka kicked in. Then I wept like a baby. It was strange to be in a company car driving eighty miles an hour, in the middle of the day, with the windows down, smoking cigarettes and drinking warm vodka out of the bottle. Wiping tears and snot off my face with the sleeve of my pima cotton dress shirt.

All those bridge abutments along the Saw Mill River Parkway looked so alluring, but for some reason I didn’t have the courage to accept their embrace.

Since I was already in the big parking lot in the Village it was quicker to go to a bar I knew that fronted on Nugent Street than schlep all the way to the Pequot in Sag Harbor. I got there quick—it was only about a hundred feet away—and ordered a double Absolut on the rocks, no fruit.

“Want to run a tab?”

“Sure.”

Some bartenders are especially prescient—I had two more singles after that. As a result my mind wasn’t as clear as I’d planned, but at least my heart had stopped thumping in my ears. I ordered some bar food to slow the effects.

“Tough day?” the bartender asked.

“Had tougher.”

The place was warm, dark and full of varnished walnut. The waiters and waitresses wore white shirts and black pants. They were all young and slender with the feel of Manhattan in the way they styled their hair and the look in their eyes. Only doing this till the real thing turns up. Gray-haired regulars lined the bar. Mostly overweight and vaguely desperate, just like the guys at the Pequot only better financed. I always got myself in trouble in places like that. I resolved to be polite and keep my opinions to myself.

I had my Regina file with me. I pulled out the yellow pad, and as I munched on some calamari and salad, wrote everything up with boxes and arrows.

I was happiest in my working life when I was trouble-shooting big process systems. I liked laying out the process as a whole, then climbing into the complexities, searching out those points in the design that weren’t behaving as predicted, or hoped for. I often divined the presence of a system failure the way astronomers discover celestial bodies, not by direct observation but by studying their effects on local energy and mass.

Though I always started a project with well-organized and precise documentation, I’d get swept
up as the chase quickened, and become lost in the pursuit, my mind continually reviewing the data and cycling through the possibilities until the answer leapt out of the chaos. Then I had to back-document so I could present a coherent diagnosis to the other engineers.

Starts here, moves this way. First this, then that. When this happens, this follows. Interconnecting data points, process dynamics. A flow scheme, just like I’d do before turning a final design over to the applications people, the engineers and draftsmen who’d input the CAD/CAM servers and render it all in beautiful graphic formats and 3-D models.

Then it went to bench testing, but I never doubted the outcome. In the secret life of my mind I was flushed with arrogant pride. Let them have their algorithms, diagrams and data organized in endless columns and spreadsheets. I had something better.

When I looked at what I’d drawn up on the yellow legal pad I knew it was time to call Jackie Swaitkowski.

“Attorney Swaitkowski’s office.”

“Is she there?”

“Who may I say is calling?”

“Sam Acquillo.”

“Of course it is. She’s been expecting you.”

“I’m at a pay phone.”

“Does it have a number?”

“Yeah.”

I gave her the number.

“Hold your ground. She’ll call in a second.”

I hung up. Thirty seconds later the phone rang. It startled the bartender and hostess who were standing only a few feet away.

“Holy shit.”

“Sorry,” I said. “It’s for me.”

Jackie burst onto the line.

“It wasn’t there.”

I looked out into the restaurant like the whole place was sitting there waiting for me to break the bad news. But they were all concentrating on their endive salads and baked pork tenderloin.

“Goddammit.”

“Hornsby was pretty organized, which doesn’t surprise me. Your cop friend said to call him when I was done and left me there for like twenty minutes. I went through everything.”

“Maybe I’m chasing a ghost.”

“I didn’t say it doesn’t exist. I said it wasn’t there. Where are you anyway?”

I told her.

“Getting smashed?”

“Trying.”

“Order a cosmopolitan in about ten minutes. I’ll be there in fifteen. The bartender’s an artist.”

“He pours a mean Absolut on the rocks.”

“Make sure you can still read when I get there.”

I went back to the bar to wait. I told the bartender about the cosmopolitan right away. Better his memory than mine. Then I worked on my flow scheme, adding a few details. It seemed time for a cigarette. I asked for an ashtray. The bartender directed me to the front stoop.

“Or, you can go to the patio out back. Bring your drink. Has a nice view of the parking lot.”

I chose the stoop in case Jackie showed up on time.
I was halfway through the smoke when her Toyota pickup careened up to the curb.

“Gimme one of those,” she said, pointing to my cigarette.

She was back in civilian clothing—cotton shirt, blue jeans and leather jacket. With a manila envelope stuck under her arm. She handed me the envelope. I handed her a Camel.

“Well?”

“Let’s go sit on the patio. We can drink and smoke and who knows what else,” I said.

I got Jackie situated and went in to retrieve her cosmopolitan and a fresh vodka for myself. When I saw what a cosmo actually was, I recruited one of the waitresses to handle transport.

“Be a lot easier to carry that thing in a milk glass,” I told her.

“Sure, and so romantic, too.”

I waited until we were alone before pulling out the envelope. There was a piece of paper torn from a note pad Scotch-taped to the cover. It said, “This is the Living Trust of Carl Bollard Senior and Carl Bollard Junior, dated March 18, 1948. Addendum November 4, 1960, prepared by Milton Hornsby, Attorney at Law, Trustee. Addendum October 24, 1961, prepared by Milton Hornsby, Attorney at Law, Trustee.”

Inside the envelope were a printed pamphlet from the New York Bar Association on the general subject of trusts and trust preparation, a few inconsequential notes to Hornsby from “CB, Sr.” and a tissue carbon copy of a cover letter that must have accompanied the trust when it was first presented. But no trust.

“Somebody took it out of here,” I said.

“I searched all his files. It wasn’t there.”

I looked across the parking lot at the back of Harbor Trust. It was built in a colonial style, though clearly from another time, probably the twenties or thirties. It was big for Main Street, but not too big. The architects probably thought the bank’s customers would feel more secure putting their money in a place that looked like it belonged to Thomas Jefferson. Four square and filled with enlightenment.

And as solid as Fort Knox.

“Of course it’s not there,” I said. “What a dope.”

“Who’s a dope?”

“I’m a dope.”

“Okay, I’ll go with that. How come?” she asked.

“If I told you that—”

“You’d stop pissing me off.”

“It’s better I just buy you another cosmopolitan.”

Night had completely fallen. With the darkness I could see that all the lights on the second floor of the bank, the offices and conference rooms, were lit. Working late.

Jackie said something, but I didn’t hear her.

“Hey,” she said, “are you listening? Hello in there.” She turned around. “What are you looking at?”

She said something else, but I didn’t hear it, because I was watching Amanda go down the back stairs of the Harbor Trust building and walk up to her silver Audi A4.

“Give me your keys,” I said to Jackie, digging mine out of my pocket.

“What?”

“Quick.”

She gave them to me. I gave her mine.

“What the hell?”

“I’ll call you. I already paid for the cosmo. My car’s right over there. Hope you can drive a stick.”

“A stick? In that fucking thing?”

Jackie was still yelling to me as I ran around to Nugent Street where she parked her little truck. Amanda was already at the light on Main Street. I pulled up behind her as it turned green. The Toyota had a notchy 5-speed with a long throw, but it was tight and easy to maneuver, despite its age and hard duty. It smelled like Jackie. I checked the ashtray and found a half-burnt roach. I lit it up.

“What the hell,” I said to the inside of the Toyota, “been a rough day.”

Despite my success following the trained bear, I really didn’t know how to tail a car without giving myself away. I wished I’d read more crime fiction or watched more TV.