The Road Narrows As You Go (44 page)

Yeah, it's true, he said and waved a hand to the sky.

She ran around the block to burn off the call from Kravis and last night's drunk, and soon enough she was panting, so she went inside a stationery store she hadn't seen on previous walks. That was the end of running. For ten dollars she bought a brushpen imported from Japan and a pad of bristol board.

In the window of an upscale clothier's on Park Avenue, she saw a mannequin dressed in a black-and-white skintight dress and matching white turban, and, not normally taken with high fashion, realized she was wildly underdressed to be on her way to visit Frank at the Hexen office for the first time. A turban, she thought, she had always wanted to wear a turban.

A turban for women? Wendy asked the salesgirl as she stared at herself in the mirrors, and the girl assured her this turban was designed by Travilla. Travilla, Wendy said. Well, then. She bought the entire ensemble and wore it out the door.

The nearest diner had a neon sign outside that read
Chambers
. Inside it smelled heavily of tobacco and stale fry grease. A long counter facing the kitchen serviced men smoking cigarettes over plates of pasta and hamburgers, and two rows of booths along the window where men hunched over the Formica tables in conspiratorial powwows. She took a booth with a view of the neighbourhood.

Wendy looked up from sketching with her new Japanese pen and
asked for a chocolate milkshake. She felt a bit overdressed in her turban. But she was used to that.

Does that say cranberry sauce? Wendy asked regarding options.

Holiday special. The waitress smacked her lips.

Sure okay, turkey sandwich with the cranberry sauce and stuffing and all that goodness, she said, then,—Shit fuck!

Chris Quiltain sat down opposite her in his chocolate brown corduroy suit and yellow shirt and ordered an open-faced Reuben and a Coca-Cola with lots of ice. He sat back in the pleather booth and smiled.

You look good, he said. Kind of glowing. Love the turban. Very chic. You must be excited about the Macy's Parade. That's why you're here, right?

Crap my pants, why don't you. You're the opposite of my friend Jonjay. He's never around and you're always.

I'm with the New York DA, Wendy—this is my second home now. He put his elbows on the Formica and formed a steeple with his fingers. Tell us what you know, Wendy. Time is running out. Cut a deal with me and the DA and the whole enterprise collapses like a puff of smoke. Thanks to the one moral soul who cuts a deal with the good guys. That's
you
, by the way.

Shimminy doo-bop, and just like that it's all over? Good guys versus bad guys? She tore the end off the seal over her accordion straw and blew the paper prophylactic straight at Chris's face. He laughed. She asked, Does your snitch wear a wire and all that goodness?

For the person who wants to flip and save themselves a prison sentence, yes. But we don't have that person yet. We're hoping someone will cooperate. But Wall Street is a tight fraternity.

How often do you find a turncoat?

He drummed his fingertips against the Formica tabletop patterned with overlapping boomerangs.

Her Thanksgiving sandwich arrived and was delicious, who would have thought turkey dinner would work so well between toasted buns? She finished the sprig of parsley on her plate. That's how hungry she was.

I know a hotel around the corner, Chris all of a sudden suggested once his plate was nearly as cleared as hers. He took her hand and pet it top and bottom as though he did not want to wait a moment longer.

Stop that.

I could be good for you. I'm in a good position with this case to make a name. There's a chance I'll meet the president.

She ate the last of the french fries off his plate. The president, eh? That's not too shabby.

Chris said, I thought we had something.

We had my grief, Chris. Vaughn was a friend, a hero, a disillusionment. Grief is one of my favourite aphrodisiacs. You're handsome, interesting, more than slightly creepy. We tried to take advantage of mutual need, no thanks to Sparky.

You're fascinating, Wendy, how you walk through life being given everything you could ask for. You're so used to the feeling, you don't know what you want.

That's too bad for you, she said and desperately resisted scratching an itch under her cool new turban.

The waitress walked by and Wendy pulled at her apron and ordered two more Thanksgiving sandwiches with everything, plus another chocolate milkshake, all in a brown paper bag to go.

Chris slammed his palms on the table where his plate used to be. I want you to flip, Wendy. I want to take you to Rudy Giuliani and make you our star witness, our whistleblower. Our hero. I want you to be the brave one to crack open the vault of lies.

I'm just waiting for my takeout.

Don't you have an inkling? Fleecen, Shepherd Media, Lupercal, the
junk bonds, the media, the plastics? Central America? Do you happen to know what Frank is up to while he's in New York?

Frank is in New York?

Chris squinted at her. Yes, we know that he is. Strange your being in the city while your
close personal associate
greenmails half Wall Street in the fastest shell game on the block. You know what he's up to? I mean, through all his allies? How you make your money?

By shaking the money tree? Look, doll, I'm here for the parade. This is all news to me.

He plans to crush Betamax out of existence, that's
one
ongoing example. Scoops up a majority of its shares this month through his secret allies, then he can hold the company for ransom to its own shareholders. All because his client Piper Shepherd has a deal in place with a competitive rival, the Victor company, the makers of the Video Home System tape cassette. Frank greenmailed the industry in an attempt to get rid of Betamax. Likely one of the greatest white-collar criminal masterminds the modern world has ever known. He's using the pensioners' fund and war veterans' fund and he's using homeowners' loans and rigging the bond market to advance his conspiracy. Evidence of insider trading all down the line, from the hedge funds, private equity firms, arbs, to the salesmen to the portfolio managers of the savings and loans. A big circle jerk. Are you listening?

I'm a cartoonist, not an informant.

I know why you won't turn. You're laundering money for him, aren't you? We've seen bank records. Listen, come clean. Help us nab Frank and we can help you.

I don't know one smidgen about Wall Street, or Law Avenue for that matter. Alls I know's doodles. Doodles Road. That's where I belong. I'm going to find a way to make a gag out of all this,
and you
.

Yet another beautiful man interrupted them. This one's hazelnut skin was covered in a satin sheen of perspiration, and he wore only a muscleshirt
and jeans under his dirty white apron. Are you Wendy Ashbubble, by any chance?

She touched her turban. Why yes, yes, I am, she said generously. What can I draw for you? Buck or Murphy? You remind me of Buck.

Your takeout is ready, he said.

Help us …
Quiltain took the cuff of her jacket in his fist. Help us indict Frank Fleecen.

She must have given them her name. Beet red, she took the bag from the dishwasher and told the waitress to put the whole thing on Chris, then pulled out of his grip and ran out into the street.

Make sure nobody tails us, she told the taxi driver. When she checked the traffic behind them, his face was right up against the window. Heart beating wildly, she was losing her mind, overwhelmed by the smell of cranberry sauce and gravy on her sandwiches wafting up from inside the warm paper bag on her lap.

We had this idea for the opening shot of her Christmas animation. She was breathing heavily into the phone as she listened to us update her, her way of soothing her nerves after the latest encounter with the SEC agent. The idea we pitched her required we paint a panoramic background of the entire vacant lot where her characters lived and parts of the neighbourhood surrounding it, big enough to zoom in and out of without requiring a cut, and we would use the existing character animation over top of this new celluloid. The thing about animation is that every frame is an edit, so the trick is to make it look continuous. Our solution was to source a massive sheet of celluloid the size of the living room so the rostrum camera could sweep its way over the world of the characters in a kind of rolling dolly shot that zooms in to the character's level and zooms out again to a bird's-eye for full effect. We compared it to the effect of those long, unedited shots in Coppola's and Altman's films, and Orson Welles before them.

Timeout, Twyla. Did you say for the opening scene? Holy crackers, get Rachael on the line … Rachael, what in blazes is going on? Twyla gave me palpitations just now. My brains are quivering like jelly. I leave for two days and you all want to scrap the beginning and start all over? For a fancier background? We're halfway there. Thirteen minutes.
More
than halfway. No time to turn back.

Wendy was calling us from a payphone next to the elevators in the bustling marble lobby of Hexen Diamond Mistral's office on Wall Street. In a minute she would go up and see Frank, taking a surprise bag of seasonal takeout to share. The sauces were beginning to drip through the bottom of the paper bag.

Delicately, we went over the rationale for this ambitious new idea. The complexity would reveal itself in the final angle as the camera swoops up to follow Nicki the funky parrot over the vacant lot to see the world from a bird's-eye view, this painted landscape twisting and turning—the magic trick would click for audiences. Yes, challenges lay ahead. But the disorientation of the idea was the perfect way to set the mood for the rest of a story full of reversals. If we worked hard we would be done the painting by the time she got home—a lie we firmly believed. All we would need to do after that was reshoot the footage.

How
is
Biz? she said, changing the subject.

Once this week we slept through the night, and at breakfast we all realized it was because Biz had not woken us up screaming. She still slept in Wendy's room, but had started going upstairs to her own suite to make headdresses for her upcoming drag show, a loose adaptation of Rimbaud's
A Season in Hell
.

Biz is a New Orleans of one, Wendy said. Look, I gotta run, my sandwiches just spilled all over the marble floor.

Wendy heard the four o'clock bell ring on Wall Street and was taken back body and soul to elementary school. Amid the curses and howls
and demands and pleas of the brokers and salesmen on the office floor, a sudden and total silence preceded the bell, as all the brokers' phones stopped ringing, and all the shouting matches paused, and at precisely four in the afternoon, a five-second fire alarm trilled through every room, cubicle, and hallway on each of Hexen Diamond Mistral's seven leased floors at the top of the Masonic Bankers Trust Company Building. The entire office of Hexen Diamond Mistral blew up into celebrations. Paper flew into the air as if typewriters had exploded. Whooping men celebrated their earnings, twisting and turning their secretaries in the air screaming,
Payload!
Spazzes. Some fellow at the far end of a row of cubicles in a blue shirt with a white collar and suspenders pushed his chair out from his desk, pulled off his tie, and started to run towards them down the aisle, screaming Hexen was up
twelve
—four points over the market. I'm a millionaire, he gagged and, after turning a lemony green, fainted straight off his feet. Five minutes later, as the festivities dissipated and the eye of the party's storm passed over the group, Frank whispered to Wendy,
I wish I could kiss you
.

Go for it, coward.

But at that moment Frank's cellphone began to chirp and he said, Hell—hello?
Not now
. And simultaneously businessmen of all stripes started to crowd around them and, buzzing with the queasy adrenaline of newfound riches, congratulated and thanked Frank and paid homage to the man with the Midas touch. Then another round of mentally deranged screams and howls interrupted them further when the Barrie-Teynte Index was announced. Bankers, cellphones, real phones, computers, and all the men started howling and barking again.

Arf arf! said Wendy. Aroo! Aroo!

Okay okay, I get the picture, Frank said. You think we're all greedy shitbags.

Aren't you going to answer your phone?

He answered the phone again. No, not now. Call me back tomorrow.
He said to Wendy, See? You're my focus. Now let me introduce you to some of my favourites among this crew of some two thousand pirates who made this one of the biggest days in Hexen's history and the biggest score of my career.

Frank studied a subordinate's computer screen. He said, According to the Barrie-Teynte Index, the high-yield bond market closed at a record high volume today.

Point five one, Frank told her, as if these numbers were the pride of a father. All thanks to the hurricane of my deal with Shepherd Media hitting ground on the market this afternoon.

Frank told the story of how a hundred years earlier, Hexen, Diamond, and Mistral were just three banking men with a polio-riddled scrivener in a single office on the ground floor of 14 Wall Street, investing and hypothecating money. But slowly, year by year, bond sale after bond sale, trade after trade, the bankers moved up from the literal ground floor until, a century later, here they were: Hexen Diamond Mistral leased the entire top seven floors of the Bankers Trust Building and employed over two thousand people. The Dow Jones, Frank told her, was at a hundred and five when the Bankers Trust was constructed, and now we're surrounded by skyscrapers to scale with today's Dow at
twelve hundred
. In effect, Hexen paid up front for these skyscrapers to be built, as the tallest of them were built on the largest loans. Right here. Right here in this office tower, the American boom was born. There's more money being made here, bought here, sold here, and cashed in here than anywhere else in the world. All the casinos in Vegas combined make a tenth of what's earned in this office. Whoever makes the market on Wall Street controls America's free market.