Present value, p.23
Present Value, page 23
But most important of all: gays were discreet couriers. Getting laid was a most cumbersome business for a United States senator. You had to get to a place, you had to get the girl to the place, and then you had to get away from the place and get the girl the hell away from the place, all without anybody taking pictures. You also had to get this done without the courier, who in all likelihood was going to be closer to the girl’s age—much closer—trying to scoop the girl for himself. For obvious reasons, nobody was better suited to this task than RafeRalph, who probably squatted to pee and definitely used that ridiculous name but nevertheless could get shit done. Not that Oldcastle had needed this service too frequently in the last year or so.
He lumbered over to another desk. Jesus, how that corn on his big toe screamed at him, made him limp. “Nice to see you, Jeffrey. How’s the family?”
“Well, Senator. Very well, sir.”
Oldcastle liked the way they all senatored him, even the ones who’d been there for years. The dignity of it.
“Good evening, Senator.”
“Nice to see you, Jeanine.”
The senator was now huffing and puffing. It was embarrassing how out of breath he got. He could barely walk through an airport anymore. He wasn’t far from needing a seat with the old crones on those irritating electric wagons that beep their way through the terminals. Jack Oldcastle, who gained 160 yards against Auburn in the Sugar Bowl! (Technically, Glidden, Michigan State’s fancy-boy halfback, had been the ballcarrier, but without Old Number 31 lead-blocking for him, Glidden sure as hell wouldn’t have gained all that yardage.) But anyway, those were details from a long time ago. He’d been a mountain of a fullback, cut from flint and able to run through linebackers as though they were sofa cushions. But he’d become a mountain of flesh who couldn’t run through a pile of leaves.
His tour of the plantation led him to three desks crammed near the back of the office, next to the kitchen and toward the interns, and in particular, past the new intern, that smart young Ursula Fratangelo, who might be helpful in drafting some accounting legislation.
“Good evening, Senator.”
“Nice to see you, Ursula.”
The senator’s salutation was wholly true and, in all likelihood, the only moment of complete veracity in Oldcastle’s entire day. It was exceedingly nice to see Ursula, whose sultry skin was the color of cocoa and whose dark hair shone with invitation. Ursula had a coy smile and a curvaceous set of sultry ta-tas, and on many occasions, including this one, she wore for a blouse a thriller featuring the improbable heroism of a lone button. Ursula’s silk blouse was only an eyedrop away from transparency. Often (and, the senator saw, tonight) the lone button defended this tissue from being thrust apart by powerful hydraulic forces. The senator found Ursula’s button compelling viewing. How mightily it strained!
“How’s the family?” he asked.
“Very well, thank you, Senator. How are you this evening?”
I’m hale and fit! I’m a former Unsung Hero trophy winner coursing with earthy desire and vital male juices, ready on a moment’s notice to run rampant through your backfield! That’s how I am!
Senator Oldcastle didn’t say any of this, of course. He was transfixed by the button, so what he said was “I’m very well, thank you, Ursula. How’s your but—your butter?”
“My butter, Senator?”
“Yes, yes, your brother,”he recovered. “How’s your brother?”
She looked confused. “I . . . I don’t have a brother, Senator.”
“Oh, I thought you did. Thought you did. How’s the family?”
She smiled politely. Hadn’t he asked her this already? He seemed to be lingering.
Goddammit, the senator was thinking, the hell with the family! The whole wretched horde of Fratangelos, the sisters and the cousins and the aunts, the goddamn brother who didn’t even exist—he was interested in the button, for Chrissakes. And now he was starting to wheeze louder, keeping up with this conversation. He would have liked to give vent to his true thoughts on the matter of the button in a nice hotel room somewhere, and he quite longed to liberate the heroic button and bury his massive jowls deep within Ursula Fratangelo’s nubile young— But no. Ever since that fool Clinton had made such a hash of things, adventures like these were damn near impossible. Snitches and bluenoses lurked everywhere, and every kid who showed up with a résumé and an aptitude for licking envelopes was a potential lawsuit. So, “How’s the family?” was about as close as he could get.
“They’re fine, thank you, Senator, my mom and my dad, I mean. I’m, you know, single myself!”
Oh, that delicious little just-single giggle, with its wanton hint of an apartment somewhere free from a spouse and perhaps even free from the prying eyes of the press!
But he felt a stab in the gut right then, a sharp, searing pain, and the stab quickly erased any thoughts of luring Ursula Fratangelo into an evening of pleasure, or any pleasure at all. He’d better get a drink to take the sting off. Maybe he needed to see the goddamn doctor.
“Are you all right, sir?”
He forced a smile. “Oh yes, thanks. Long day. Have a good evening, Ursula.” Old Number 31 waddled off to the office lobby, thinking, Maybe I’ll skip Nell’s and go home. Get some rest. Feel better tomorrow.
Ralph Moldy had already gotten the usual shit done. The limo was idling at the curb, waiting to take the senator to his apartment in Northwest Washington, where the lease had recently been brought up to date.
“LIKE A Japanese monster movie, huh?” asked Max Pearl at lunchtime the next day up in Boston. Pearl was carrying out Judge Chandler’s order by welcoming a potential new client to his cluttered third-floor office near the center of town, on Tremont Street.
“I don’t follow,” said the potential new client.
“Phineas Brubaker of Dover meets Pearl the Jew. You wanna sandwich?”
Pearl was standing behind the desk, which overflowed with heaps of papers and cardboard files. A paper plate clung precariously to the summit of the highest pile. On the plate an island of seafood-salad wraps was separated from potato chips by a moat of white drippings. Pearl was eating a half sandwich, holding the soggy wrap like a cigar and leaning over the plate so the juice would drip on the plate. His tie was tucked into his shirt.
The sounds in the office were of car horns from Tremont Street, clanks and bangs from the radiator, and munches from Pearl’s jaw. He was a loud eater.
Scattered everywhere on the floor were files, in stacks, in heaps, in piles. Behind Pearl, a dusty window gave half a view of the Old Granary Burying Ground. A graveyard, thought Fritz Brubaker, not a good omen. He sat in one of the two tired wooden chairs parked in front of Pearl’s desk. The other chair held a suit jacket and three files. In the corner of the office was a leaf bag full of soda cans.
Fritz declined the offer of lunch.
“Me, I would have done just what you did,” said Pearl.
“Meaning?”
“Firing that dope Wolcott. A putz if there ever was one. Guy needs a script to wish a judge good morning.”
“Oh. Well, I didn’t fire him, exactly.”
“Always lugging those librarians around with him, too. Personally, I thought that was a good move. I liked the part where he had to admit to about a hundred people that he didn’t actually have a client. And then, with all those reporters watching, had to slink out of there. That was a nice touch.”
“I didn’t mean to insult the man. I just hadn’t hired him.”
“I know. Your brilliance was accidental. That would be consistent with everything else you did, which happens to have been dumber than rail grease. Sure you’re not hungry? You’re thin as hell, Fritz.” Max held out the seafood cigar. Fritz shook his head politely. “No? Fine. But the arraignment? It won the Oscar, Fritz, for dumbest speech by an adult male not under the influence of a hard-on.”
The guy was direct, Fritz had to give him that. “Is this the part where you make your pitch for a new client?”
“I’m getting to that.”
“Oh, good.”
“Here it comes.” Pearl put on a caring, empathetic look. “Hey, whaddayagonna do? Could have happened to anyone.”
“That’s it?”
Pearl shrugged. “I lied, actually. Should have said ‘Anyone not a Jew.’ ”
“Why not a Jew?”
“Only a WASP is that stupid,” said Max Pearl. He finished the wrap and began to eat the now soggy potato chips. “I love seafood salad. You like seafood salad?”
Fritz shook his head.
“Didn’t think so. You’d rather catch the fish on the fly rod, then have Chester grill it whole over mesquite, am I right? You great white chiefs and this fishing thing. It’s very primitive, Fritzie.”
“I do like to fish,” Fritz conceded.
“Please,” Pearl replied, dismissing with a wave of his hand the whole aboriginal business of standing in the cold in the hopes of hooking up a fighting, scaly, clammy creature with a length of filament. “Me? Gimme the processed.”
He fished out another wrap from the paper plate. “You know, Fritzie, all those times you said you’re guilty, the prosecution can use that, probably. And the statement to the papers. Ouch. Even Prentiss Wolcott might have advised against it. All that shit about being responsible and double-entry whatever the hell it was? Nuts.” He shook his head. “Very hard to get a good jury now.”
Pearl straightened up suddenly, held his arms out. The wrap dripped white juice on the carpet. “But I was forgetting. You’re dying for a federal condo. Escape the urban blight of Dover. Free meals for three to six. Saturday night in the prison showers, all the dates a girl could want. Homosexual rape is such a turn-on! I forgot. Silly me.”
Fritz smiled to acknowledge the performance. “Bravo,” he said. “Anything else?”
Pearl finished his wrap, pulled his chair out from behind the desk, and sat. He sighed. “I was just thinking I don’t get too many clients like you.”
“Did I hire you? I missed that.”
“Yeah, a minute ago, I think it was. Anyway, most of the guys I get are mugs. They call me because they got drunk, they got high, they got laid, and they’re in trouble. Dumb as mud hens, most of them. They hire Pearl, figuring he’s smarter than the dumb prosecutor. Which is correct, but unfortunately, not as much smarter than the dumb prosecutor as the client himself is stupider than the dumb prosecutor. If you know what I mean.”
“DP minus C is greater than P minus DP.” Fritz found a more elegant way to express the idea. “Doesn’t say much for C.”
Pearl took a moment to work it out. Was that an insult? Maybe. “Like I was about to say. You’re different.”
“Must be a disappointment for you.”
Pearl said, “Here’s this guy Fritz Brubaker from the Marblehead Brubakers, thank you very much, lives in a mansion in Dover, got a house on Nantucket, married to a partner at Elboe, Fromme, got a sailboat worth more than my house, got a bike worth more than my car, plays golf at the country club, got— What is it, Fritzie, two or three mil in brokerage accounts, am I right?”
“Dunno. What kind of car do you have?”
Pearl smiled. For a gentile, this Brubaker was pretty good. He went on. “Turns out, the guy is not actually stupid. Not that you would know this. With his pedigree, all that Yankee inbreeding, to look at him and all, you’d think the guy’s got the brains of a golden retriever. Eighthgeneration prep and all that. You know? But you’d be wrong. Fritzie’s a math major. From Amherst.”
“And your point, Mr. Pearl, was what?”
“I ain’t got a point, Fritz. That’s my problem. My point is, there is no point. A guy with all you got, and with your brains, shorts his own company, in his own name, on his home computer?”
“Not as smart as you thought, I guess.”
“For, what was it, thirty-five hundred shares? You know, I asked around. Some of the very plaintiff class-action guys who have their jaws locked on this company right now. Very successful guys. Ooh, do they make money.” Pearl whistled, closed his eyes, allowed himself a momentary ecstasy, then snapped back to his speech. “But anyway. Your thing? Strictly amateur night. A high school stunt. You short thirty-five hundred shares, even knowing a hundred-mil charge is coming out on a company like Playtime, you might expect two, three bucks of movement. Five bucks tops, my friends tell me. And Fritzie, believe me, these people are never wrong about money. They know. So, on five bucks, you make seventeen five. A great score is fifty thou. You? You melted down the whole company and made, what was it, a little over a hundred thou?”
“That’s what the indictment says.”
“Right. A hundred thousand, parked in your kids’ account. Now, to the jury, that’s a lot of dough. Even to a guy like me, maybe, it’s money. But to you? Please. It’s a boat payment. Your wife makes that in what, three weeks? So, for a boat payment, you commit a federal crime on your home computer. Hi, look at me, folks. The guy trading on inside information, the guy shorting the stock—that would be me, Fritz, in case anybody’s interested.” Pearl shook his head.
Fritz’s face was reacting in small ways around the corners of his eyes and mouth. He’d begun to take on a hint of a frown during this monologue. There were problems, he could see that. He tried to change the subject. “I thought Judge Chandler wanted you to tell me about my rights.”
Brubaker didn’t want to talk about it. As Pearl suspected. “You know, boneheaded as your stunt was, Pearl could help you. A guy as sophisticated as you does a stunt like this all on his own? A point not without interest. I wonder if—”
“Time does fly, doesn’t it, Mr. Pearl!” Fritz made a show of looking at his watch. He rose. “But I have to run. Thanks for speaking with me, as the judge said we should. Send me a bill, will you?”
Pearl stood. “Fine, go. But don’t pretend to be missing my point, Mr. Differential Equation from Prepville. You get my point.”
“I really don’t—”
“Fritzie, read the newspapers! What is the story today? Is the story Playtime’s phony books? Or is the story you?”
Fritz stopped at the door. He turned and gave the lawyer a searching look. “What do you mean?”
“Do I have to spell it out for you? Playtime was going to be bankrupted anyway. You’re in finance, so you had to know it. The big guys must have known it, too. This restatement of earnings was going to put the company out of whack with its banks, the banks were going to stop lending, and the company was going to get creamed at Christmas. Suppose you’re the CEO and you know you have to file bankruptcy for the company. Do you want the story to be that the company’s revenues aren’t there and its management put out phony numbers, or do you want the story to be that some rogue employee shorted the stock and set off a panic?”
Fritz was still regarding Pearl curiously. “Is that what you think happened?”
“I’m not getting a whole lot of other ideas from you. I give you a chance. I am asking you to explain why a guy who doesn’t need the money does something this lame, and what I am hearing is a loud silence.”
A bus thundered by outside the window, rattling the glass.
“In a manner of speaking,” said Max Pearl.
The judge had liked this guy, Fritz was thinking. He’d even kind of joked with her, and she hadn’t bitten his head off. Maybe he should do this the judge’s way. With a lawyer. Maybe that would be smoother.
“Fritzie, great white chief look impressive in my doorway, but you gonna go, you gonna stay?”
“Sorry, Max,” Fritz answered. “I was just thinking. Is it all right to call you Max?”
“Everybody calls me Pearl.”
“Everybody?”
“Everybody.”
“Your wife calls you Pearl?”
“My ex does when she’s talking to me. Which, believe me, is rarely.”
“Okay, Pearl. Can I ask you a few things?”
“Sure.”
“First, this conversation we’re having, it’s privileged, right?”
“Right.”
“That means you can’t repeat it to anyone?”
“Right.”
“That’s bulletproof?”
“Only Superman’s bulletproof, Fritzie. But the privilege is close. You ask me to help you commit a fraud or a crime, that’s not privileged. Anything else, I can’t repeat.”
“Okay. And I’m the client, right? So you have to do what I tell you?”
“Within limits.”
“Do I say whether to go to trial or plead guilty, or do you?”
“You do.”
“So if I say I want to plead, it’s a plea?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“What do you mean, pretty much?”
“If I think you’re doped out, or mentally incompetent, or don’t know what the fuck you’re doing, I have a problem.”
“Do you? Do you think I’m any of those things?”
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re doing.”
“But that’s not the test.”
“No, the test is, do I think you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing. And no, I don’t think that.”
“Good. You’re right. Okay?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, let me tell you, as my lawyer, what I want to do.”
“I got hired? I must have missed that. When did that happen?”
“A minute ago, I think it was.”
“Oh. I’m very expensive, by the way.”
“How expensive?”
“Three hundred an hour. No, four. I forgot, the firm had a rate change last week.”
“I thought the firm was you.”
“Don’t worry, it’s less than what Prentiss Wolcott gets.”
“What’s Prentiss Wolcott get?”
“Daley and Hoar? Six, probably,” Pearl guessed.
“Fine, make it six. Now I want to talk about the plea.”
