Graveland: A Novel Read online

  Sirens are soon rising in the background, and as the first one closes in on the scene, Ellen withdraws.

  The clip is jerky and blurry in parts, but enough of it is clear, in three- and four-second bursts, to make it feel like there’s something there, something in it to be seen.

  If you look hard enough.

  She takes off her jacket and sits at the desk, hunched forward, leaning in close to the screen.

  And watches it again.

  And again.

  She pauses, fast-forwards, rewinds. Plays it with sound, plays it without.

  Eventually—after maybe the ninth or tenth replay—she does spot something. It’s tiny, hardly a lead at all, and may well prove to be of no significance whatsoever, but at the same time it’s the kind of thing she could imagine Val Brady’s NYPD source zeroing in on.

  She plays it over and over. Gray Hoodie is on the sidewalk, wrestling with the doorman, and at one point in the struggle—for less than a second—his zip-front jacket gets shoved up a bit, over his abdomen. Under the jacket he’s wearing a dark T-shirt, and on the T-shirt something is printed, some lettering, a word or words.

  She freeze-frames it.

  The only thing she can make out, the only thing that’s clearly visible, is a single letter, an uppercase A. It’s in some weird font. The succeeding couple of letters are a complete blur.

  And that’s it.

  She grabs the image, saves it, and prints off a copy.

  She holds up the page to study it.

  A.

  Significance? There can’t possibly be any. It just seems like it might be significant because it’s the only concrete, extractable, quasi-evidentiary element from the whole clip. There’s no point at which the gun is visible, for instance. The two faces are visible, okay, but that’s of no use to Ellen. It’s not like she’s got any face-recognition software and a database she can run them through.

  So … just a fragment of something printed on a T-shirt, then?

  Yeah. She sighs, and places the sheet of paper next to the keyboard on her desk. She leans back in the chair.

  Either she stops this right here, or she takes it forward in some way.

  But how?

  For a few minutes, in the still silence of the apartment, staring into space, she mulls it over.

  A.

  A.

  A.

  She glances at the sheet of paper again.

  The font is weird. Half Gothic-y, half futuristic. What does she know about fonts? Not a lot.

  She leans forward and reaches for the keyboard.

  8

  FRANK OPENS HIS EYES. It’s morning. He must have fallen asleep at some point, even though it felt like he was awake all night. He remembers lying there staring into the void, aware of each hour passing on the clock, his thoughts on a continuous loop but at the same time maddeningly, perpetually incomplete.

  He tried to go over his finances, to calculate how long he might be able to string things out, but the figures kept dissolving and re-forming, refusing to compute into any comprehensible pattern.

  He tries again now, sitting on the edge of the bed. Fully awake this time, he finds it just as hard, though for different reasons. He may have simplified everything—recalibrated his priorities, consolidated his accounts, cut down on his outgoings—but all of that was done in the context of paid employment. Now, with a negligible severance package and any prospects of new employment hopelessly compromised, the figures might compute, but not into any pattern he wants to comprehend.

  He takes a shower and gets dressed.

  His phone is on the kitchen table. He passes it on his way to the fridge.

  OJ first.

  But holding the fridge door open, about to reach in for the Tropicana carton, he hesitates. Then he turns quickly and picks the phone up from the table. Like an idiot, he’s been putting this off, as though the delay were some form of Zen discipline.

  He turns the phone on and waits.

  Keys in his PIN.

  Waits.

  Fridge door still open.

  No messages, no voicemail.

  Fuck.

  He goes back and rereads the various texts he has sent to Lizzie since Saturday. There are four of them, all short and to the point. Call me, basically. Plus, he’s left her about three voicemail messages.

  Again, call me.

  Now. Here’s a simple question. Is his daughter—as her mother seems to think—just a selfish, thoughtless little bitch … or is there something wrong?

  He doesn’t know, but neither does Deb—which is surely the salient point here. Because okay, maybe Deb would be right to see a link between Frank’s current vulnerable state and his sudden concern for Lizzie … but if it turns out that something actually is wrong, how would that even matter?

  In what universe?

  He closes the fridge door.

  Then he opens it again and takes out the OJ. He drinks directly from the carton, empties it, tosses it in the trash.

  Coffee next.

  This he drinks standing at the window, gazing out, distracted, but also thinking, making another calculation.

  He could be up there in two hours.

  What else has he got on today? He’s unemployed.

  After he finishes the coffee and rinses the cup, he heads into the bedroom and gets a small carryall down from the top of the wardrobe. In reality, he could be up there in two hours, stay for another two, and be back in time for a late lunch.

  But what if he needs to stay?

  What if—

  He packs the bag. A change of clothes. Some stuff from the bathroom.

  You can’t argue with being prepared.

  On his way down to the car, Frank is aware of a faint thrum of excitement running alongside the more regular and familiar rhythm of his anxiety.

  He knows what it is.

  He’s been stuck in a deadening routine here—in this apartment, in this town—for many months, and despite the distressing nature of the immediate circumstances, despite the fact that he may well be back here in a matter of hours, it feels like he’s escaping.

  * * *

  From the backseat of the car, cell phone in hand, Craig Howley gazes out at the Sixth Avenue traffic. After a good deal of hesitation, he calls Angela and tells her to cancel his appointments for the morning—two meetings, one at nine, the other at ten thirty, and a conference call at twelve. It’s probably because he doesn’t usually do this—has he ever?—that Angela asks him if he’s alright, but he reacts to her perfectly reasonable question by snapping. “I’m fine. Jesus. Just reschedule those, would you?”

  Angela then reminds him, frostily, that he has a lunch appointment at one. It’s at Soleil on Madison Avenue, with Gary Wolinsky, and he can’t possibly skip it.

  “Okay, okay.” He sighs loudly. “I’ll be there.”

  When they’ve finished, he powers off his phone and slips it into his jacket pocket. As he does so, he looks down at the cream-colored folder on the seat next to him, the faded, almost grubby appearance of the cover contrasting sharply with the shiny red leather of the upholstery.

  He still can’t believe what a high-risk strategy this seems to be on Vaughan’s part. On the one hand, yes, it’s a vote of confidence in Howley, but on the other … isn’t Vaughan very deliberately goading him? It’s like an act of loyalty and an act of betrayal.

  Simultaneously.

  The two things, inextricable, but mutually exclusive.

  And Howley can’t even talk to him about it, because there’s nothing to say, nothing to negotiate. He just has to make a simple decision—whether or not he’s going to accept the job on these terms.

  Howley looks up.

  He certainly didn’t see this coming—though he can hardly claim he didn’t see the old man coming, can he? The old man’s been there all along.

  The old man’s always been there.

  Howley looks out the window. The traffic has been moving at a crawl up to this point,
but suddenly there’s a break, and a spurt, and in no time they’re at the Fifty-seventh Street lights. Howley tells his driver not to turn here, as he normally would, but to go straight on. When the lights change they surge forward, and two blocks later they’re turning left onto Central Park South.

  Howley then tells the driver to pull over, that he needs to get out of the car and walk around for a bit. The driver pulls over, but can’t stop for long, can’t park. He looks into his rearview mirror, awaiting instructions.

  Howley grabs the folder, and a bottle of water from the bar, and as he’s reaching for the door he tells the driver to head on to the Oberon Building, that he’s fine, that when he’s ready he’ll … get a cab.

  Or something.

  Once out of the car, Howley takes off into the park at a brisk pace and makes his way over to the Mall. Near the end of this tree-lined thoroughfare he stops and picks out a bench on the east side that is dry and relatively clean. He sits down and glances around. He doesn’t know why, but he feels somewhat out of place here, in this little patch of virtual countryside. What is it? The smoothness of his silk suit? His pristine leather shoes? The scent of his cologne? Do any of these really sit well in the context, in this fresh, chilly environment he has so unexpectedly found himself in?

  It’s also been a while since Howley was actually in Central Park, and he can’t believe how many people are out—strolling, jogging, walking dogs—and at nine fifteen on a weekday morning. Who are these people anyway, he thinks, and why aren’t they at work? His weekdays are spent in offices and conference rooms, in elevators and hallways, in traffic, with all of the people around him busy too, engaged in similar work-related activities. These people, on the other hand … what, are they retired, independently wealthy, on vacation?

  He opens the bottle of water and takes a few gulps from it. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and throws the half-empty bottle into a trash can next to the bench.

  He picks up the folder and flicks through it, recognizing certain pages—pages he has already read up to half a dozen times—and then he closes it again.

  Holding the folder out in front of him, he stares at its cream-colored cover, still surprised that Vaughan has entrusted him with this, because … it’s just that the damn thing is so dangerous. It’s like a live grenade in his hands, and if he were so inclined he could fling it out there, and do some serious damage with it …

  Reputations, careers, lives.

  But—

  Even by the way he’s holding it, the care, the hesitancy, it quickly becomes apparent to him that that’s not what he’s going to do.

  Or anything like it.

  Essentially, this is a cache of incriminating evidence—details, going back years, of Byzantine deals that could, at best, be described as unorthodox.

  And at worst? Well, no point dwelling on it.

  The takeaway message here is that the Oberon Capital Group is, and must remain, a private company. The disclosures that a public offering would entail, in relation to financial structuring, tax arrangements, salaries, options, profitability, and so on, are quite simply unthinkable.

  Howley draws the folder in again and puts it under his arm. He stands up and looks around. What the hell is he doing in Central Park anyway? He needs to get back to the office. He needs to get this thing under lock and key—or, better still, back into the hands of Jacqueline Prescott.

  Walking fast, he heads south. Before long, and as he glides under the shadowline of the skyscrapers on Fifty-ninth Street, Howley comes to the (perhaps now obvious) realization that he was never really going to be in control of this process.

  How would he have been?

  Across from the Plaza, he stands at the lights, waiting. He could hail a cab from here, but the Oberon Building is only a few blocks away. He’ll enjoy walking toward it, approaching and falling under its shadowline.

  The lights change, and he moves.

  Vaughan wanted to get this handover out of the way fast, so that’s what they’ll do. Tomorrow’s Friday. They’ll hold a press conference in the morning, get it done before the weekend.

  Ba da bing.

  As it were.

  He should text Angela.

  He takes out his phone and turns it on. He looks at his watch. He might even make it back in time for that ten-thirty meeting.

  * * *

  Watch what it does overnight.

  Val Brady was certainly right about that. Thursday morning and it’s everywhere, hysterical banner headlines screaming LOOK OUT WALL STREET! and MANHUNT! and WHO’S NEXT? It’s the lead story in most major newspapers across the world. And why wouldn’t it be? Investment bankers being targeted for assassination? Summary executions on the sidewalks of Manhattan?

  Ellen puts on a pot of coffee. She then turns on her phone and checks for messages. There are four, and all of them, to her surprise, are about the Ratt Atkinson piece she did for Parallax. She’d forgotten, the magazine is out today, and already, apparently, her piece is causing something of a stir.

  Just as the coffee is ready, another call chimes in. She lets it go to message.

  “Ellen, hi, Liz Zambelli, great piece today, I think there’s going to be quite a buzz around this, give me a call.”

  Liz Zambelli is a booking agent for a couple of the talk shows. One of the earlier voicemail messages was from someone on The Rachel Maddow Show.

  But Ellen’s puzzled. What is it? She’s been so preoccupied with this other story for the last few days that she barely remembers what she wrote in the Atkinson piece. She’s about to check online to see what people are saying when her phone rings again. This time she picks it up.

  “Max.”

  “Hi, Ellen.”

  She waits. When he doesn’t say anything immediately, she sighs. “What is it, Max? I haven’t looked yet, but there’s obviously something there, something significant.”

  “Well, that’s debatable.”

  Ellen rolls her eyes. “Oh, just tell me.”

  It turns out that what has caught people’s attention is a passing claim in the article that Ratt Atkinson has been exaggerating his popularity on Twitter in order to make himself look good in the eyes of a potential electorate. She quotes one source inside Atkinson’s own campaign as saying that 89 percent of the former governor’s followers on the site are fake, and that up to half a million either inactive or dummy accounts have been set up, and maybe even paid for, in a spectacular act of what has now come to be known as “astrotweeting.”

  “That’s the takeaway? Nothing about…” She pauses, thinking. “Nothing about his … tax arrangements? The state contracts thing? No mention of that stuff about his wife and the soccer coach even?”

  “Nope.”

  “Jesus, that’s depressing. Twitter trumps sex as material for a scandal? I wasn’t even going to include that bit. If I hadn’t been in such a hurry I would have cut it.”

  “But it’s kosher?”

  “Oh yeah. It’s all been fact-checked. Talk to Ricky. And I’ve got tons more about it, too, quotes from the search agency that crunched the numbers, there’s a whole breakdown of his follower stats, but I dropped most of it, because … I just didn’t think anyone would give a fuck at this point.”

  “Well, a fuck they most certainly do give. I’ve had a dozen calls so far today. Listen, this may not be the Pentagon Papers, but it’s exposure for us, okay, and we could use it.”

  “I don’t know, Max.” She looks over at her desk. It’s strewn with loose pages, printouts of different typefaces, hundreds of them. She was up late again last night, chasing this … she hesitates to even call it a lead—especially since it led nowhere—but at least it felt like she was doing something serious. She did suspect she’d be giving up on it this morning, but if the alternative is appearing on cable news shows to talk about Twitter accounts with odd usernames and no profile photos, she’s not so sure. “I’m working on something.”

  “What? Not Lebrecht? Not the shooti
ngs?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Do you have something, Ellen?” Pause, no answer. “Because it looks like you were right about it not being a professional setup, but we all know that now. So what else do you have?”

  “Nothing, not really, but—”

  “Well, then.”

  “Not exactly nothing. I need some time, Max. And I don’t want to stop. I don’t want to get distracted by this Twitter shit.”

  He groans.

  “Trust me, Max. If I get anywhere with this, anywhere at all, it’ll be a whole lot better for the magazine than some pointless story about an ex-governor who’s got no chance in hell of securing the nomination in any case.”

  “That’s a big if, Ellen. Have you seen how the story has scaled up? Every news organization in the world is on this now. How do you compete with that?”

  “I don’t. I only compete with myself, Max.”

  “Well, I hope one of you comes out on top, because—”

  “Look, give me a couple of days, okay? The Twitter story can wait, it isn’t going away. If I haven’t made a breakthrough on this other thing by the weekend, I’ll go on goddamn Bill O’Reilly for you.”

  Max exhales loudly. “Fine.” He’d clearly like to know more about where she is on the main story, but he knows not to push it.