Walls of Silence Read online

  The telephone hovered near my ear. “Who on earth do I call? 911?” I was a securities attorney; I didn’t have a hotline to the cops.

  “I’ll get them for you,” Paula said.

  At first, the officer who took the call was incredulous. Could I seriously be suggesting that I’d overlooked contacting the police in the immediate aftermath of such a huge incident? I managed to move him from emphatic disbelief to utter contempt for my stupidity. After that I gained a foothold on his sympathy. The cop wanted to know the gist of what had happened and then asked me to come to the precinct house if I was up to it. Alternatively they could come to the office. Sheldon would lovethat. I’d come to them, I said. Did I need a ride? They could send a car. No, I would make it under my own steam.

  The call lasted about ten minutes and Paula must have been watching the indicator light, because she was in my room almost as soon as I had hung up.

  “Safe to come in? You’re not a fugitive from justice?”

  “Yes and no,” I said. “I’ve got to go down to the precinct and make a statement.”

  “I’ve already called for a car. Do you want me to come with you?”

  “No. You’d better stay here in case Sheldon needs to know what I’m up to. And while I remember, can you reschedule any meetings I’m missing and call Jocelyn in Frankfurt to say his subscription agreement will be late? I’ll have my cell phone on.”

  FIVE

  The precinct building was hotter than hell, an old brownstone mausoleum that managed to be even smaller on the inside than it looked from the outside. If there was air conditioning, it was well hidden. Organizational behaviorists would have pigeonholed the place as a hostile work environment. I checked in at the front desk and was escorted out back through the flotsam of villainy and victims locked in fierce altercation with hard-pressed cops. There was a derelict having an argument with himself, as if he wasn’t prepared to wait in line for someone to shout at.

  I was taken to the end of a dark and airless hallway and shown into a small room. The walls had once been white and there was an air conditioning unit centered in an old sash window. A garbage truck had contrived to squeeze itself into the narrow alleyway outside and was now revving its engine.

  A man with Mediterranean features, dressed in plain clothes, was already in the room. He came up to me and shook hands.

  “Sorry about the noise,” he shouted. “We were supposed to gointo a new building about three years ago. So, of course, they haven’t spent a cent on this place since then: No soundproofing, wacky air conditioning, and I wouldn’t recommend you use the bathroom unless you really have to.”

  He motioned me to sit on one of two schoolroom chairs that were set against a plain formica table.

  “I’m Detective Manelli. You spoke to one of my colleagues.”

  Through the din of the garbage truck and the rattle of AC, Sicilian boyhood fought with New York manhood in Manelli’s voice. He was young and relatively fresh-faced, although the job had given him premature shopping bags under his eyes.

  “We have some witnesses,” Manelli continued. “But you seem to know this Carlson guy and, if I’ve got it right, he actually asked you up there to see his new car.”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “So tell me about what happened.”

  I told him. I guessed I would be repeating the story a few times in the next forty-eight hours.

  “So, what was he like?”

  Whatwashe like? A master of the universe. One of the top ten dealmakers on Wall Street. A legend. Or maybe, I was starting to think, a myth.

  “He was a client,” I began. “A senior investment banker with Jefferson Trust. You know Jefferson Trust?”

  “Sure, I know it. Who doesn’t?”

  “I’m an attorney with a British law firm called Clay & Westminster. We have an office in New York, a small one: a resident partner, four associates, and some admin staff. You won’t have heard of us.”

  Manelli didn’t disagree.

  “We work for Jefferson when they do deals in Europe or Asia. They’re good clients and JJ was one of our main contacts.”

  “Was he a friend as well?” asked Manelli.

  If he had asked me twenty-four hours earlier, I’d have said one of the few I had in New York. I had hardly spread my wings in the last five years; socially, I was more mollusk than butterfly. There was JJ, there was Carol Amen, the senior in-house banking attorney forJefferson Trust. Marty Smith of Callaghans, but now he was in the Netherlands Antilles, so evenings out with him were a thing of the past. Work-related appointments filled my diary and, even where these involved lunches and dinners, professional transactions—not intimacy—were the main menu items.

  “A friend of sorts,” I said, “though, I realize now, not a close one. I never even went to his house or met his wife. He took me to a few ball games and we used to go for a drink after work now and then.” Monthly Jack Daniels evenings in a dingy midtown bar where we’d get drunk and talk crap and then stagger out to the limos that JJ had called for us. His to take him to his Central Park West aerie, and mine to my serviceable but rather pedestrian apartment in Battery Park.

  “How long have you been living in New York?” Manelli asked me.

  Five short years. People could be tedious when they spoke of how quickly time passed, but this five yearshadshot by. Five years of deals, schmoozing clients, and playing office politics—the politics of partnership not yet bestowed.

  “When are you going back to England?”

  “Hopefully never,” I said.

  “You like it here, Mr. Border?”

  I did—I loved it.

  But why? The Empire State Building? I’d never been up it. Bloomingdales? I’d never shopped there. The shows? Two in five years, and both British. The friends I’d made? Yeah, like JJ.

  “Okay.” Manelli got up from his chair. “I’m going to have someone take a full statement from you and then you can go.”

  “Will you need to see me again?”

  “Sure. Maybe a couple of times when the picture gets clearer and we know what we’re dealing with. But with your input we can start asking around to see why he did this thing. You’ve been very helpful.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t come in earlier.”

  Manelli waved his hand. “You’ve had a big shock. We’ll send over a trauma counselor, maybe tomorrow, to help you out.”

  “I don’t think I need one.” Jesus, a trauma counselor.

  “They’re good,” he said. “Speak to them. They know what they’re doing—they’ve got plenty of traumas to practice on in this city.”

  SIX

  It was lunchtime when I stepped out of the precinct building and into the wall of people skittering around in their search for food or shopping. They needed a good reason to be outside—it must have been ninety degrees.

  Doing my civic duty hadn’t been too bad. Society, in the shape of Detective Manelli, seemed grateful enough. It didn’t look like it was blaming me for what had happened on the FDR. I was, after all, merely a bystander.

  But still I felt guilty. Should I have seen it coming? How, for Christ’s sake? I hadn’t even been inside his apartment, let alone his head.

  The meager information I had on JJ couldn’t begin to explain why he had invited me to his suicide.

  At six that morning I thought I’d been humoring a kid with a new toy, not a homicidal maniac with a death wish.

  I decided to go back to the office. There was plenty to do on the merger and, anyway, Frankfurt would be hoarse from screaming overthe subscription agreement. I’d call Carol Amen at Jefferson Trust and get her take on things. We could talk freely. She’d understand. There was a time when I thought we might get to talk without the impediment of clothing. But . . .

  Anyway, there was gin with Ernie at six to look forward to.

  “I see you got promoted in my absence,” I said on entering my office and finding Paula in my seat.

  She smiled, bu
t only very slightly.

  I glanced at the in-tray to check for new arrivals. “Don’t tell me, I should be at home with my feet up. I just want to keep active, that’s all.”

  “You’re over twenty-one. If you don’t want to chill, then don’t,” she said tersely.

  “What’s the matter?”

  Paula got up and mimed cleaning my chair with her hand. “You better ask Sheldon Keenes.” She started to leave the room.

  “Wait a minute, Paula. I’m asking you. Come on, tell me.”

  “Sheldon’s mad at you for calling the police and then going there without telling him.”

  “So? He’s cross with me. Why should that upset you? Like you say, I’m over twenty-one and can look after myself.”

  “He got pretty mad at me too.”

  “Shot the messenger?”

  “Kind of.” She picked up a handful of files from my meeting table. “Anyway, I’d better get on with these and you better go see Sheldon. He tried to call you on your cell phone and was going to get you to come back to the office. Lucky you showed.”

  “I had my cell phone with me.” I felt for and found the solid lump in my jacket pocket.

  “Was it switched on, genius?”

  I took the phone out of my pocket. The little screen was dead. I looked up to share my exasperation with “off” buttons that could press themselves. Paula didn’t look like she wanted to share anything with me.

  “You’re still pissed with me,” I said. “Is there something else, Paula?”

  She hesitated. “You’ve had a bad enough day. It’ll keep.”

  “No,” I said. “Spit it out now. It’ll make me feel worse if I know there is something bugging you and you won’t tell me.”

  “Your meeting, this morning,” she said. “Was that about the merger?”

  Of course it was, Paula. You know it was, but you’re not supposed to ask.

  I returned the cell phone to my pocket.

  “Fin, is it going to happen?” she asked. “Mergers affect people; this one affects me. Is it going to happen?”

  “If it does, you’ll be safe,” I said. Mendip was my protector, family almost. And in turn I’d be Paula’s protector, her knight.

  “How do you know?” she hissed. “You know nothing about me.”

  She didn’t shut the door as she left my room; maybe she couldn’t trust herself not to slam it.

  She was right. I knew nothing about her—apart from the death of her husband and the daily drama of her commute from Brooklyn. She had loyally listened to all my daily woes and grumbles; she had managed my minimal domestic requirements: the cleaning lady, the cable guy, and the landlord’s agents. She knew as much about the fabric of my rather flimsy life as I did.

  When I’d arrived in New York, she was already with the firm. I had just assumed she always would be there, that she would continue to ride in my exhilarating slipstream.

  I realized how little I’d really known about those around me.

  I left my office to go and see Sheldon Keenes.

  Sheldon was on the phone, but his flapping hand briskly drew me in. I flopped onto his leather couch. I scanned the dark cherry-wood fittings of his office and noticed the cut-glass tumbler of Perrier on his desk. Ice lolled around between the slice of lime and the still vigorous bubbles. Partners got couches, Perrier, lime, and refrigerators. Myfather once had all the accessories of partnership at this firm. Would I ever lay claim to them?

  Sheldon had made a home of his quarters: family photos, the pictures of famous fairways to remind him of his triumphs on the golf course, the crayon birthday card from his four-year-old daughter. Then there were the clear Lucite blocks that encased summaries of the transactions he’d done—tombstones, dead deals.

  He put down the phone.

  “As my nanny used to say: You’re a caution,” he said. “I told you to wait for me. The next thing I find, you’re down at the police station blurting everything out to the boys in blue.”

  The lecture failed to display the conviction of a pro. Ernie could carry it off, but Sheldon couldn’t.

  “I’d left it too long,” I said. “I had to go.”

  He nodded gravely. At thirty-five, six years older than me, the cherubic face was at odds with the young fogey’s affectation of age and wisdom. “I understand,” he said, “but I would have preferred it if you had been accompanied by one of us. After all, you were in shock.”

  “I just told them what happened, nothing more or less,” I insisted. “I obeyed the rule of interviews and didn’t speculate or meander.”

  “I’m sure you handled it perfectly, Fin. But this tragedy involved one of our most important clients and we don’t want to take unnecessary risks.”

  “Risk of what?” I could feel myself getting irritated. “Is the client going to sack us because one of its bankers has some kind of brainstorm and invites me to his suicide? I don’t think so.”

  “I don’t think so either. But everyone’s edgy. Charles especially so, and he is still three thousand miles away. You must understand that there are sensitivities. Or is it sensibilities? Whatever. People are edgy, that’s all.”

  “Is that why you chewed out Paula when she was just doing her job?”

  “She should have known better,” Sheldon said, taking the tiniest of sips of his Perrier as if to show how little sweat my observation had generated.

  “For God’s sake,” I said, “she just did as she was told. There was no need to shout at her.”

  “I didn’t shout at her.” He paused. “I don’t shout; you know that.”

  Point to Sheldon. His self-perception was accurate: He didn’t shout. Paula hadn’t even said that he had shouted.

  Sheldon smiled patronizingly. “Look. You’re upset and that’s understandable. Of course you should have spoken to the police, but you should have spoken to me first and I would have arranged support.”

  I nodded wordlessly—I certainly wasn’t going to apologize.

  Sheldon opened his desk drawer and took out a single clean sheet of paper. “What are you working on at the moment?”

  Staying sane in the aftermath of JJ’s suicide, mainly.

  “Plenty,” I said. Sheldon was the resident partner and was supposed to know everything that went on in the office. He required schedules of progress on all clients, no punches to be pulled on the glitches, and no preening over the successes. He required two meetings a week with me and the three other associates where he tackled everything from late-paying clients to the brand of mineral water to be kept in the kitchen refrigerator. On the surface he was a democrat, but in reality he was a control freak who liked to know the opinion of everybody before he ignored it.

  Therefore the clean sheet of paper was entirely redundant; he simply needed to look at my latest progress report on the system. But Sheldon was a man of ceremony, a lacquer fountain pen flecked with firey shards of silver, the swish of black ink across thick cartridge paper, the zen of calligraphy. It obviously gave him pleasure and in the scheme of things it was harmless enough, I supposed.

  But why a list? Why now? At this particular moment. Fear started to skitter among the guilt, even though pride should have been my dominant emotion. I had more than my fair share of large deals, ones that mattered for billing and profile, ones that counted for the league tables, ones that earned fat tombstones.

  Sheldon looked up expectantly, pen poised.

  “There’s Hudson Food Retail,” I began, “and their proposedacquisition of the UK network of Bellamy Stores. Straightforward enough, except for a few antitrust issues. More complex are the two Eastern European GSM cell phone licenses up for grabs with US members of the consortiums.”

  “Consortia,” Sheldon corrected.

  “Next would be the Romanian brewery that Busch wants—can’t imagine why, Romanian beer is gnat’s piss.”

  “Spare me the tabloid commentary,” Sheldon said.

  “What’s this for, Sheldon?”

  “What�
�s what for?” He laid down his pen and stared at me over his steepled fingers. I wanted to twist his cherub nose.

  I waved my hand over the sheet of paper that was filling up with immaculate copperplate. “This. This bloody list. What’s it for? You could look at the computer and find it out and I could be recovering from the wobble you seem determined to diagnose for me.”

  “I’m the resident partner,” Sheldon said quietly. “I want to know what one of my staff is doing—exactly what he is doing. A computer wouldn’t give me the nuances.”

  “Nuances?” I sneered. “These are deals we’re talking about, bits of paper, piles of money. They don’t have fucking nuances.”

  He closed his eyes. “Calm down, Fin.”

  Lists were dangerous. Lists were inventory, something to help keep track of valuables in transit. Were my deals about to be in transit?

  “Are you firing me?”

  Sheldon groaned. “Don’t be bloody absurd.”

  “Then why this? Is it because of JJ?”

  “You’ve had a terrible shock.”

  “And this isn’t helping.” Sheldon picked up his pen and his pink lips puckered, like caterpillars in a clinch. “One step at a time,” he said. “Finish the list and then we’ll talk.”

  My immediate boss wanted his list. Edited highlights, he could have edited highlights. “Three private placements,” I said, “BAM, Cypher, and Rubbex. No Securities Act registration; they’re all 144A issues. Fairly straightforward, except for Rubbex—that’s the condom manufacturer—where the roadshow is proving a little controversial,for obvious reasons. Pitstop B2B listing on NASDAQ. And, of course, our very own merger with Schuster Mannheim.”

  I uncrossed my legs and dug myself deep into the couch.

  “Those are the important matters,” I said, daring Sheldon to challenge me on what was important and what wasn’t.

  “And the small items?” he asked.

  The crumbs from around the deal table. The speculative research, the confidentiality letters to review, the engagement letters to draft, the company investigations to perform.