Present value, p.33
Present Value, page 33
(Which Richard did, although it looked like he might be peeking.)
“But—”
“Linda, do as I tell you. The suit is nice, but nice is not appropriate for us to meet the dicky-faces in. For this meeting only one color will do.”
Presto! Richard vanished to the back of the store. Presto! He returned with another suit. This one was jet black, it was tapered, and in the morning light of the Newbury Street boutique, it gleamed like a weapon. Richard gasped with reverence when Linda put it on. “God, it’s gorgeous on you. It’s Garbo.”
“I’m going to need it—”
He waved her off. “I am having this fitted today, Linda. Today. You will have this suit tomorrow morning. This thing will be illegal on you!”
He clapped his hands; his manner became brisk. He began to pace around the boutique in the manner of a field commander giving orders to his colonels. “Right. We have the dark suit. I’m thinking simple and powerful for the blouse. A silk blouse—I have something in cream. No, cream is recitals and opera, it won’t do.” He paced, his hand to his chin. “Blue? Too predictable. Red? Too dressy, too old-lady. Pink? Too weak. Wait!” He rushed to the back of the store, returning in a flash with a lemon-colored silk blouse. “We are black and gold in this meeting, black because we are remorseless and fearsome in crushing the bad bad dicky-faces, gold because that’s what they have to pay us to make it better. Right?” He held the blouse up to the suit. “You like this?”
She did, actually. Now the master appraised her critically, assembling in his mind the entire package. “Okay, let’s pull our hair back this way”—he reached around her neck and gathered her hair in a ponytail—“draw it tight from the head. Sunglasses, we’ll wear Chanel, I think, on the hair, like this”—he slipped a pair of his own out of his breast pocket and up on top of her head—“black, please. All right now, jewelry. We’re not to do pearls, pearls are far too congenial. One gold strand on the necklace, not too fine, not too goopy. Simple gold hoops for the earrings. What do we have for a watch?”
“Cartier.”
“I didn’t mean to doubt you.” He gestured at the Swatch she’d worn that morning. “We’ll leave that, whatever that thing is you’re wearing today, we’ll leave that at home, sweetie, with the other gardening tools? Yes, that’s fine. Wear the Cartier, a bracelet or two, not too many.
“Now, Linda, please sit.” He sat her on one of the couches, put his hands on her shoulders, and looked at her severely. “We have to talk about shoes.”
“I’ve got plenty of shoes, I’ve got some Ferragamos that would—”
Richard looked stricken.
“No?”
A blast of scolding trochees: “No no, No no, No no, No no, NO! No little-girly pumps, Linda, promise me!”
“What do I—”
“Linda, we are going into this meeting to kick the nasty little dicky-faces, aren’t we? Kicking the dicky-faces is a job for boots. Boots!”He stood up and put his hands on his hips. “What do you have?” he demanded.
“I’ve got some Pradas that I could—”
“Are we a Japanese tourist? If you wear Pradas to this meeting, I will never speak to you again.”
“Well, what should—”
The commander began to pace again. “I’m thinking we could go Gucci. We could. But no. It’s not quite edgy enough. We need something that isn’t quite over the top but is teetering on the edge. We are going in to kick some ass, and we need to be a piece of ass. So let’s really go for it.”
“How do you mean?”
“Darling, look at me. This is serious.” He had stopped and adopted his gravest expression. “You have to go Manolo.”
“Go Manolo?”
“Forget the Pradas and the Ferragamos and the Guccis. Leave them in the closet. You’re going Manolo.”
“Richard, aren’t those kind of—”
Richard waved it off. “Of course they’re expensive. You could buy my Vespa for a pair of Manolo Blahniks. Richard’s little brain was a little slow to get rolling this morning, you don’t even want to know what kind of a party Richard was at last night, Linda, but the brain is finally switched on now. I’m getting to work on the suit, you go straight to Neiman’s, you talk to Edward on the second floor at the back, you know where it is, Edward has big brown eyes and a dimple and he wears a little earring, very elegant, and he’s completely gorgeous, I’m calling him on the cell the moment you leave and I’m telling him to drop everything to put you in the perfect pair of Manolos. I want them quite snug on the calf—Linda, listen to me, this is important—quite snug on the calf, the Armani is very fey, but it’s not a pair of cargo jeans, we understand? Edward will know. I’m going to call him. Do not talk to Sylvia, she works in women’s footwear, too, but she’s a cow. Promise me! Oh, and Linda, bring the corporate card, because we’re going to max it out, darling. And promise me one more thing.”
“Yes?”
He lowered his voice. “Edward is a dreamboat, and I have the utmost confidence in him, but he can be, sometimes just a little, I mean, I don’t know this, but I have just a little suspicion—anyway, a little mercenary. I don’t think he’ll—but—Linda, if anyone tries to sell you anything less than a three-inch heel, call me on my cell immediately.”
SHE DID bring the corporate Amex card. A decent regard for ironic justice compelled at least that, and so, when Richard and Edward had completed their work, Elboe, Fromme & Athol would be $6,280 poorer. But it was worth it. In her battle gear, Linda shone like a black knight. She was a phenomenon of nature, like Mediterranean heat shimmering over black sand, an apparition in black and gold: the Armani suit a gleaming jet, the necklace and golden hair and lemon blouse blazing fire.
And Richard was right: when, without warning, she stormed the downtown battlements of Elboe, Fromme & Athol two days later, it would be the $1,895 Manolo Blahniks that would knock out the rank of secretaries on the twenty-eighth floor, and the associates staring out of their office doorways. They were sharp-toed black boots in the softest leather, with three-inch stiletto heels: kick-ass boots. Tie-’em-up-and-whip-’em boots. Her boots, her purposeful walk, her gorgeousness with a mean streak, it all announced, as she strode into Elboe’s offices, that ass was what she’d come to kick: specifically, the skinny hindquarters of Marvin Rosenblatt.
IT WAS right before eleven A.M. when she swept into his corner office and trapped him behind his desk, like a squirrel cornered in the basement. He stood there, startled and frozen, his fingertips on the desk.
“Oh, Linda, how nice to see you . . .”
“Is it, Marvin?”
“Of course, Linda. Of course.” Said with a forced smile, a smile of terror. “I’m a little tied up right now, but I’d love to get together and—”
With an electric shimmy, the Armani of Doom slid into one of his chairs. “Better get untied, Marvin.”
She was dark and dangerous, she was long and cool, she flamed like gold foil. Marvin would be no match for her. She left him no escape. She was Elizabeth I with a page, Catherine the Great with a serf, a cat scolding a very naughty mouse.
“Marvin,” she began, shaking her head, “Marvin Marvin Marvin. We really need to talk.”
Marvin gave her his best “I can’t imagine why” look. Then he started to say, “I’m afraid now isn’t a good time, Linda, but I’m sure—”
She shook her head and leaned forward. “We need to talk right now, Marvin,” she said. “Sit down.”
So he sat.
“Marvin, let’s see what you guys have done to me. Let’s take inventory, okay? Item one: my clients. Item two: my career. Item three: my future. Item four: my partnership. Item five: my house. That about sum it up?”
“Linda, I—”
“Oh no, sorry, I missed an item, Marvin. Item six: my body. You took that, too. You used me. A personal betrayal, to give the stew flavor. The others were only money, after all. But you were hot-wiring me during our adventure in New York—you were, to be blunt, fucking me while you were arranging to fuck me, weren’t you, Marvin?”
Linda smiled coldly. She had spoken with a calm control, without visible or even audible anger. This new coolness scared the hell out of Marvin. His mind was racing—how could he extricate himself from his office? At a minimum, he’d be late to his meeting with the steering committee, which could lead to being modestly Subject to Criticism. Marvin started to stand again, but her withering glance froze his glutes and left him hovering between sitting and standing, like a guy in a bathroom stall taking aim at the seat. God, she was so totally sexy! And so malevolent! With a last effort, he popped back to his feet and began stammering that this wasn’t the appropriate time. “I know how upsetting all of this must be, but you have to understand that for the good of the firm—”
“Marvin, a little advice. Don’t say ‘good of the firm’ around me again.”
He tried again: “I, I, know how you must—”
“You don’t know anything. And don’t even think about leaving your office for steering committee. Not till I’m done.” She smiled brightly.
“Linda . . .”
“Marvin, I’ll tell you something. I may seem calm to you, but don’t be misled. I’m capable of quite a scene. Screaming, hysterics, the whole thing. I might open this door and start doing a nutty about the affair we had.” Oh, the coldness of her, the implacably icy coldness. She said the A word out loud! Marvin had never seen her like this.
Linda went on. “Frances would get a kick out of that. Then I’d give it, oh, six or eight minutes to be on every e-mail in the firm. Marvin, darling, if I were you, I really would sit down.” She gave him another frosty smile.
Marvin froze behind his desk. She wouldn’t! Would she? He slowly eased back into his chair.
“That’s better, Marvin. Now we need to have a conversation about this letter I got the other day.”
The letter—he knew it must have been the letter. He’d told Fisher not to have them send that letter. Very ill advised. It had gone out from HR and told Linda that the firm was going to continue her monthly draw but, while she was on administrative leave, suspend any distributions until year’s end, in conformance with policy statement twenty-six under the partnership agreement. Translation: she would get $10,000 a month.
Linda removed the letter from the breast pocket of her suit. She tore it into pieces, and Marvin watched them flutter to his desk.
“I don’t care about you being a weasel, Marvin. And I don’t care about being out of this place. But I do want you to know one thing. If any more fallout from this mess hits my kids, I bust an ugly on you. Ug-leeee. With twenty years left before retirement, on the curve I was on, I think I can come up with a number that looks like twenty million dollars. But I can do something to you, Marvin, much worse than that.”
She wouldn’t, he thought; she couldn’t.
“Marvin, my kids have lost their house. Their father’s gone to jail. I have a tuition bill coming due in ten days, and you are going to cause that bill to be no problem to me. Am I clear? My kids are off to expensive camps this summer, and they aren’t going to feel any more pain out of this thing. That ten-thousand-a-month draw that you had Joanne”—Linda referred to the assistant HR director—“send me? With the idea being that I hang around on tenterhooks until the end of the year, waiting for you to do the right thing? I don’t think so, Marvin.”
“We should get Barry for this discussion, Linda, and I—”
“You don’t want Barry for this discussion, Marvin, not for what I am about to tell you.”
This caught him up short. He waited. Linda leaned back in her chair and, in a gesture of sheer contempt, swung her $1,895 Manolo boot heels onto the desk. Marvin stared at the soles.
“You want a leave of absence, Marvin, you’re going to pay for it. You are going to get with Barry and the rest of the weasels, and you are going to get me a check for sixty thousand dollars. I want it in five days. You will get me sixty thousand dollars a month for as long as I feel like it. Think of it as a deposit against the considerably larger sum that we will settle upon later. When I get around to it. If there is any question in my mind about that check coming, I’ll sue, and I promise, Marvin, I promise that in the lawsuit, I will be dirty. I will be low. I will be nasty. I will stop at nothing. Nothing, Marvin.” She swung her legs down and leaned over the desk, close to him. A teeny gulp escaped, try as Marvin did to stifle it.
“I will throw all the mud that I know. I’ll be launching mud from howitzers, Marvin. Because I’ve got a lot of mud. How you guys screwed Latham in last year’s comp, for example; how Fisher funneled his love nest through the firm’s accounts as ‘visiting lawyer’s housing’ in New York. But that’s all window dressing, Marvin, because the main item, count one, in big italics, Marvin, on page one of the complaint, is going to be the Marvin affair.”
“Linda, I know you’re upset, but—”
“Sex discrimination gives it such flavor, don’t you think? How you screwed me; how you worked to cut me out of the Playtime account; how you conspired to get me fired when I tried to call a halt.”
“That’s not accurate, Linda, and I—”
“Marvin, I will get you screwing me on the front page of the complaint that I will file in Suffolk Superior Court, where no one from the Globe will miss it. And on the interior pages? Steam—whistling, scalding steam. Marvin, believe me when I say your marriage will go down in flames over this. Flames, Marvin.”
“Linda, you’re being irrational, I think, and—”
“I’m being irrational? Try Cheryl when she picks up the newspaper and reads about our romps in the Fordyce Hotel. You want irrational? That will be irrational. Who do you think will end up with the house in Newton, Marvin?”
“Linda . . .”
“Marvin, you have no idea what irrational is. No clue. You want to see irrational, then let me think you people are going to play money games. Let me think that five days from now.”
Marvin’s face was white as a bratwurst. His mind raced with fear, its circuits overloaded with the madwoman’s direct assault on the principle of “I must not be subject to criticism.” Linda had gone crazy! She would do that to his marriage?
But Linda, who could read his mind, smiled her you-bet-your-ass-I-will smile. The meeting was over. The black knight had swept the field and trounced the enemy. She’d even left two little half-moons of black shoe polish on the Carrara marble. She rose and went to the door.
“Bye-bye, Marvin,” she said. “Think it over—for the good of the firm.”
29 CLUB FED
“I’M TELLING YOU, Fritzie, every once in a while you should listen to your lawyer” was what Pearl had said. “It’s a big mistake not to self-report. You get stuck on the Elreno Express, you don’t know what could happen.”
Boy, would Fritz remember that advice over the next two weeks. A nonviolent first-time offender usually had the right to check himself in to the penal camp, as though it were some kind of retreat. He could take thirty days after the sentencing hearing to wind up his affairs, then be driven there by friends or family. But Fritz had passed on all of that, which seemed like more deal cutting to him. They’ve sentenced me, let them take me, was his attitude. Let’s get this over with.
Which proved to be a mistake, just as Pearl warned. Because they took him, all right, via a roundabout route that would make sense only to a border collie herding scattered sheep, or a federal bureaucracy. He spent four days in the county jail in Plymouth, Massachusetts, wearing a dark green jumpsuit, before the Bureau of Prisons turboprop (the Elreno Express, as they indeed called it) was even available. And as he shuffled up the gangway to board the plane at the local airport, hobbled and shackled, with the dozen other hobbled and shackled prisoners, he realized that the Elreno Express simply flew from prison to prison, taking on a few here, letting out a few there. They’d get to yours eventually, but they didn’t seem to be in a hurry about it.
The Express’s next stop was FCI Columbia, South Carolina. There Fritz would spend five days in a holding cell in a maximum-security prison. The cell was stark and small, painted a dingy green. He was released for only two hours a day, to a bleak concrete yard that bristled with surly prisoners. One look from them made him long for the cell with its rickety bunk bed and rust-stained toilet. Almost every prisoner in the yard was black—did they send any white people to jail in South Carolina? he wondered. They stared at him with blank faces. Except for those two electrically apprehensive hours in the yard, the South Carolina days dragged slowly, ponderously, into lonely South Carolina nights. A year and a day, he mused, is going to take longer than I first thought.
Until one morning, as he lay on the bunk, a fat old cracker in a gray uniform appeared at his cell door.
“I hear you’ve drawn Deer Path time, Brubaker.” It took just a moment to translate (I heahyee drone Deeuh Path tom, Brubakuh).
“That’s what they told me.”
“Must be your lucky day,” he said. “The Elreno Express is back in town. Time for you to move on” (Thale reeno spress back in tayown. Tom fuhyee t’move own).
But the lumbering turboprop once again moved not on but farther away from where Fritz was supposed to be going. The turboprop flew west, over the Smoky Mountains, and over Tennessee, and— Damn, wasn’t that the Mississippi he saw beneath the wingtip? The plane didn’t put down until Springfield, Missouri. Same cell, different prison. With one important exception.
The exception’s name was Steve Jessup. A blond bantam rooster from the Oklahoma panhandle, he was assigned temporarily to bunk with Fritz while, as they said, “they got his permanent assignment organized.” Nervous as a hog on ice, Jessup slept about four hours a night and spent the rest of the time pacing the cell. He’d gotten the idea that Fritz’s name was Bluebaker, an error Fritz didn’t feel obliged to correct.
