Graveland: A Novel (12 page)

But what, then?
Who?

With sirens filling the air, and getting louder, Baxter glances over at the wounded limo driver.

He’s clearly in agony. No blood is visible, though.

Is that good or bad?

Baxter doesn’t know.

As the first siren closes in, with multiple others coming up in the rear, he looks to his left again, still curious, but the woman with the camera phone is no longer there.

*   *   *

On the fifty-seventh floor, at the Oberon reception, no one will talk about anything else. There’s wall-to-wall media coverage, too. He can see it from here, through the glass, it’s on every screen and monitor—the Herald Rygate, Scott Lebrecht.

And the Twittersphere, apparently, is “on fire.”

Not that Craig Howley gives a shit about that.

He’s distracted enough as it is.

Without Vaughan here, it’s like the meeting he chaired on Monday morning, only multiplied by a hundred. That event was an exclusively in-house affair, with just the heads of the various investment groups, whereas this afternoon’s event is wide open, attended by some of the industry’s biggest players, and with pretty much everything, Oberon’s whole succession strategy (Vaughan conspicuous by his absence, Craig Howley clearly in charge) on display.

What he can’t figure out is if all the attention on this shooting at the Rygate is a help or a hindrance. It’ll be a help if it provides a little misdirection, takes some of the heat out of what’s going on here, but if no one even notices in the first place? What use is that?

He circulates, floating in and out of different conversations.

“Well, of course, once is happenstance—”

“Yeah, but Scott’s an arrogant little prick, I mean come
on
…”

“And how did this not get flagged?”

He actually wishes Vaughan were here.

“—twice is coincidence—”

“You’d imagine Homeland or the NSA’d be all over it like a rash, but Jesus H. Christ—”

“—thinks he’s David O. fucking Selznick—”

The old man is so much better at this than he is.

“—and three times is enemy action.”

A pause.

“Who said that? Henry Kissinger?”

“Auric Goldfinger.”

Everyone laughs.

What worries him most is that Meredith might have taken him the wrong way earlier on, when he called. She was very quiet, which was unusual, so now he has visions of her whispering into Vaughan’s ear like a Borgia, or some scheming harridan from Ancient Rome.

Don’t listen to that awful man
.

Get rid of him
.

He framed what he had to say as diplomatically as he could. But did he play his hand too soon? Did he make the classic mistake?

“… you create value, and at some point, it’s inevitable, you’re going to want to
liquefy
it.”

“—it’s a paradigm shift—”

“—but we’re dropping the mandatory arbitration requirement for shareholder disputes, right?”

It’s just as private equity issues are reentering the conversational orbit like this that Howley looks up and sees Angela approaching.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Mr. Howley,” she says, holding a phone out to him. “It’s Mr. Vaughan.”

Staged as he imagines this might seem to some of the guests here, Howley is genuinely surprised. As he takes the phone from Angela he hands her his glass.

“Jimmy,” he says, and in a louder voice than he intended. Out of the corner of his eye, he notices a sort of wave effect of turning heads. In the circumstances, should he have said
Mr
.
Vaughan
? He’s not sure.

“Craig, a word.”

“Of course, Jimmy.” He moves over toward the window, asking himself what this is about. The Rygate thing? The reception? What he said to Meredith?

He stands there, waiting, midtown nestled under a heavy blanket of gray cloud.

“I thought I’d be able to make it in today, but … I’m
tired,
Craig.”

Howley’s eyes widen. He doesn’t speak.

“I’m on these pills, it’s a new treatment, sort of a trial really, some guys over at Eiben are working on it, but I’ll be honest with you, Craig … I think it might be time to … you know.”

“Oh,”
Howley says, his stomach jumping. Though he’ll have to do better than that. “Jimmy, I—”

“Look, we both knew this was coming. And you’re practically running the show as it is.”

What does he say to that? He can hardly agree. “Yes, but without
you,
without—”

“Yeah, yeah, stop it.” Vaughan pauses, then clears his throat. “So, is this what they’re all talking about there? Where’s the old man? What’s going on?”

“Actually, no, it’s not.” Howley glances over his shoulder. “This thing down at the Rygate has everyone pretty exercised at the moment.”

“Right. Well, sure, it’s a big story. Three strikes. There’ll be no getting away from it now.” A short silence follows. “Craig, we’ll make this quick. We’ll set it up, put out a statement.”

Howley nods. “Okay, Jimmy.”

“Call me in the morning.”

“Yeah.”

“And in the meantime, I might send some stuff over for you to look at, some notes.”

“Okay.” Howley furrows his brow.

Some notes.

When he turns around to face the room, he feels weirdly self-conscious, as though he has somehow pulled a fast one. But the feeling doesn’t last. He hands the phone back to Angela and takes his drink again.

He joins a small group and within less than a minute has subtly steered the conversation around to the subject of bringing private equity companies public.

“So,” someone eventually asks, “what about Oberon?”

“Well,” Howley says, as though the question had never occurred to him. “I’m of two minds, really.” He raises his glass and drains what’s in it. “But not for long. One way or the other, I’ll be making a decision about it very soon.”

THREE

It was at a reception in Cardinal Spellman’s residence prior to attending the Al Smith Dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria in October of 1948 that William J. Vaughan was introduced to the young congressman from Massachusetts. The two were spotted later that night by Walter Winchell at El Morocco “cupiding” a couple of girls from the chorus of
Brigadoon
.

—
House of Vaughan
(p. 103)

7

O
N THE WAY BACK UPTOWN IN A CAB,
Ellen replays what she has on her phone. It’s blurry and chaotic, but it’s all
there
—except for the first few seconds. It was only when she spotted Scott Lebrecht coming out of the revolving doors of the hotel that she lifted her phone, flicked it to camera mode, and started recording—by which point, of course, the action was already under way … young guy rushing forward, arm outstretched, bulky doorman mounting a counterattack. But from that point on she pretty much caught the whole thing.

As the city blocks flit past outside now, she makes a couple of calculations. One, this surely confirms her theory. Whoever those guys were, they weren’t professional, weren’t military trained, certainly weren’t any kind of “special ops.” And they weren’t jihadis, either. From what Ellen could make out they looked like … just two young white guys. One of them was wearing a gray zip-front hoodie and jeans, and the other one had on a heavier coat, jeans, and a woolly hat.

Her second calculation is that she won’t have been the only one back there quick on the draw with a camera phone. She might have been the first, but there’ll have been others—and there’ll have been CCTV footage as well, no doubt—which means … no way this doesn’t get out, no way this whole story doesn’t undergo a serious retrofit.

Which in turn, of course, leaves her high and dry.

Because what else has she got?

Given how these two guys have left themselves so exposed—dozens of witnesses, cameras, possible forensics—Ellen can’t imagine they’ll be remaining free for very long.

That’ll wrap the whole thing up. And with zero input from her.

She looks out the window.

At least she won’t have to deal with the guilt of having allowed, or enabled—or, at any rate,
refused to prevent
—the killing of Scott Lebrecht.

She’s assuming here that the limo driver makes it.

He was still on his feet. There was no blood.

Ellen decides to get out at Eighty-ninth Street and walk the remaining four blocks. As she’s turning onto Ninety-third Street her cell phone rings.

“Hi, Max.”

“Holy shit, Ellen.”

“What?”

“You were
right
.”

“That was fast.”

“It’s everywhere.”

“It only happened forty minutes ago.”

“They have footage of it, from someone’s phone. It’s on MSNBC.”

“I knew it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was there. I got it on
my
fucking phone.”

“What?”

Standing outside her building, glancing around, she explains.

“Jesus, Ellen.”

“What?” Feeling defensive all of a sudden. “You think I should have reported this? I was going to. I was on my way in to see
you
.”

“No, I mean you could have been
hurt
. Those guys had guns.” He exhales loudly. “It’s insane.”

She bites her lip. “Did they mention the limo driver?”

“Er … not specifically. What—”

“There was a single shot discharged. One of the limo drivers took the bullet.”

“All they’re saying is that one person was wounded, no details.”

“Wounded.” She pictures him standing there, the look on his face.

“You want to write this up, Ellen? We can put it on the website, upload your footage. Tweet the shit out of it. Maybe draw in a few hits.”

“Listen to
you
.”

Then she goes silent, thinking about it.

“Ellen?”

“How do I explain what I was doing there?”

“You were covering the equity conference.”

“I don’t know, Max. Let me look at it again and I’ll call you back.”

She heads inside.

The air is stuffy from last night. She opens all the windows and puts on some coffee. She transfers the footage from her phone to her iMac and watches it a couple of times. Then she turns on MSNBC to see what they’ve got. Alex Wagner and a panel of talking heads discussing payroll tax cuts. She goes to their website and sees the clip there.

Hers is better.

Longer, more detailed, clearer, less jumpy. But theirs is alright. It gets the point across. The report that goes with it is sketchy, but she can already see the shape of what’s emerging.

Her
version, basically.

Or what her version would have been if she’d managed to get it out there. But it’s too late now. Because these guys will be in custody within hours. She’s convinced of that.

She skips the coffee and lies down for a while, exhaustion catching up with her.

When she opens her eyes again it’s after five.

Groggy and stiff, she rolls off the side of the bed and sits there with her head in her hands. What a weird, misshapen day it’s turned out to be.

She gets up and checks the usual news sources.

No developments, just a heightened realization that this is actually a huge story. The Yemen thing is mentioned again, and there are sidebars about corporate executives upping their security details. “Citizen” journalism is dissected, and the phone footage is shown endlessly.

She flicks around all the channels and websites, checks Facebook and Twitter, and aggregates the various reports in her head. The banner here is that Wall Street is under attack and no one seems to have the first clue who the attackers are.

Or no one is
saying
.

Because Ellen presumes the police are making headway with what they’ve got. It was Broadway, after all, and in broad daylight, so there’ll be CCTV footage from every angle. Witness statements, ballistics, prints, fibers, particles.

A DNA deposit, maybe. On the doorman.

Somehow.

Fuck
.

How did she let it all slip away?

She gets up from the desk, but immediately feels a little dizzy and has to reach for the back of her chair to steady herself. If she’s going to stay on her feet, if she’s going to keep working, she needs to eat something.

But not here.

*   *   *

There’s something about this—being at home in the middle of the afternoon, on a weekday, when he’s not sick or on vacation—that Frank
really
doesn’t like.

It’s weird and unsettling.

On his way back from the mall, he stopped off and bought a six-pack, and has put it in the fridge, but that’s probably where it’s going to stay. The alternative was a bottle of Stoli. That would have been too extreme, too fast, too downward-trajectory.

The six-pack isn’t going to do it for him either, though. He can tell.

Too chill, too ball game.

What he needs is some serious anti-anxiety medication, a nice warm blanket of
Don’t worry, that didn’t just happen,
or of …
Okay, even if it did, so fucking what?

But he ran out of
those
pills a long time ago. After the divorce.

Another thing Frank is finding weird at the moment—now that he thinks about it, now that he has the time—is the fact that he could even casually refer to this place he’s in as “home.” It bears so little resemblance to anywhere he has ever lived before.

Sitting on the couch now, he looks around.

Everything is stripped down, smaller, more compact.

Cheaper.

He hasn’t put any kind of a personal stamp on the place. There’s no art or interesting furniture, no design sense. There are no CDs or DVDs either. That stuff is all digital now anyway, invisible and hidden. He has a few books, but they torment him more than anything else. He started several in his first couple of months here, but lost his way with each one.

And it’s not just books. His sense these days is of everything being fragmented, digitized, atomized. He can’t stop at a channel on TV for more than a few seconds, can’t decide what music he wants to listen to anymore, can’t read a newspaper. He can’t pay attention to anything in front of him for long enough to even bring it into focus.