Graveland: A Novel Read online

  He also has a reputation for hanging out with the talent—dates with actresses, courtside seats with the boys, who-knows-what in the private jet. In photos, he comes across as something of a jock, blond and burly, not exactly good-looking—at least not preternaturally so, not the way some of his new A-lister friends tend to be—but he does have an energy about him, and a certain charm.

  That’s what it says here, anyway.

  In her barely legible 4 A.M. scrawl.

  She flicks forward to the next page.

  Lebrecht has a ferocious temper, serious commitment issues, a severe nut allergy, and a “rad” collection of sports cars.

  He has a two-year-old son in Florida he apparently refuses to acknowledge.

  He has over ten thousand followers on Twitter.

  Ellen stops.

  She reads that last bit again. She swivels in her chair.

  Hhmmm.

  She reaches for the keyboard, logs on to Twitter, and finds him.

  He appears to be an avid tweeter.

  One thousand two hundred and fifty-seven so far. Been at it for about a year.

  She scrolls down through some recent ones.

  Awesome celebration last night with my Jenkintown brohims. #achingintheplaces

  A leader leads for a reason. Try to jump ahead of him and all you’ll get for your trouble is lost.

  Tough negotiations on the Salertech buyout, including that ninth inning zinger, but we prevailed. Kudos to all concerned.

  She goes back to the top.

  His last tweet. It was one hour ago.

  On a panel soon at this year’s Global Equities Conference at the Herald Rygate. The things we do for love.

  * * *

  Craig Howley wonders if Vaughan is going to make it into the office again today. He looks at his watch.

  Nearly ten.

  Isn’t that pushing it? Even for the old man?

  He showed up yesterday, having pretty much thrown down the gauntlet the previous evening, but if Howley thought Monday was long …

  Jesus.

  The old man came in looking his normal self—back in a suit, groomed, dapper—but everything was painfully slow, his movements, his speech.

  His reaction times.

  It was a good thing they had nothing on, no visitors or important meetings.

  Howley catches Angela’s eye through the glass partition, but she shakes her head.

  He swivels in his chair and gazes out the window at midtown, and at his allotted shard, here on this side of the fifty-seventh floor, of Central Park.

  Should he call Meredith? Show his concern? Not that that’s really what it is. What it really is, he knows, is impatience. Because ever since Monday’s early meeting, and the way he was approached afterward by the various group heads and senior managing directors—not to mention Vaughan’s quip later on about rearranging the furniture in his office—Howley has been in a sort of waking fever dream of anticipation.

  He doesn’t have any illusions, though. He fully understands who and what James Vaughan is, and that no one can replace him or occupy quite the same space he has occupied in Washington and elsewhere for the past sixty years—more, in fact, in a way … if you go back, if you include his old man, William J., and his old man.

  Fuck.

  But replace him as head of Oberon? Howley could do that, no problem.

  The thing is, in a long and distinguished career, Vaughan has had many more strings to his bow than just the Oberon Capital Group. He worked under Jack Kennedy, fought with Johnson, switched to the Republicans, got into bed with Nixon, did a stint at the Agency under Bush. He was always there in the background during Reagan’s two terms, and it was the same again later, during Dubya’s two. Without once being elected or appointed to public office, the man has exerted enormous influence, and mainly by operating in the interstices between federal agencies, private contractors, consulting firms, lobbyists, think tanks, and policy institutes.

  Not that the private equity side of things has been too shabby. After more than forty years in the business, Vaughan can boast that Oberon has achieved compound annual returns for its equity investors of something in the region of 57 or 58 percent.

  Which is staggering.

  Howley gets up from his desk and goes over to the window.

  So keeping a show like that on the road would certainly be enough for him. It’s what he wants and knows he’ll be good at. He spent long enough at the Pentagon shaping the acquisitions program and influencing which weapons systems were bought, not to mention being one of the instigators of the great outsourcing land grab that saw contractors move in on logistics and support services. And now, on this side of the so-called revolving door, he has proved equally adept at wooing and acquiring these same companies.

  But not just them, as it turns out. He has been phenomenally successful at parlaying his considerable political clout into hard equity across a whole range of sectors—pharmaceutical, energy, telecoms, real estate. Plus, Oberon has expanded, they’re everywhere now, in Africa, Asia, China, and with the company sitting on stockpiles of cash the prospects for deal-making have never been better.

  It’s what Vaughan hired him for. The two men go back, they get along. It was a clear succession strategy.

  But these things rarely go smoothly. Of the major buyout firms that are still run by their founders, most of them have no strategies in place at all for handing on the reins—which is fine, or will be for a while, because the CEOs in these places tend to be in their mid- to late sixties. But in Vaughan’s case, strategy notwithstanding, the situation has become critical.

  Client confidence is key here. It’s not something you can afford to mess around with. The Global Equities Conference starts today, for example, and there are a lot of people in town, some of whom will be dropping by the office later on for a cocktail reception. And the Jimmy Vaughan of legend is one thing, but the Jimmy Vaughan of yesterday? That’s another matter entirely.

  So he really needs to know what’s going on.

  Howley turns and catches Angela’s eye again. He brings a hand up to his ear and makes a phone gesture.

  She nods.

  He’ll have a word with Meredith, try to get the point across. She’s not the only one who can speak in code.

  * * *

  Leaving the Melmotte Room on the tenth floor of the Rygate Hotel, Scott Lebrecht turns to his assistant.

  “This interview, Baxter? Where we doing it again?”

  “The Wilson. It’s uptown a bit. On Madison.”

  “I know where the Wilson is.”

  Baxter shrugs. They arrive at the elevators.

  “So that went well.”

  “No it fucking didn’t.”

  “What. You got a great reception.”

  “Nah.” Lebrecht shakes his head. “You know what it is? Most of these big equity guys are twenty years older than I am, more in some cases, and it’s like they think of me as the kid or something. They talk down to me. And I hate that.” He pauses. “What I hate is these events. I mean, a panel discussion? Come on. People here don’t think I have better uses for my time than a fucking panel discussion? Please.”

  The elevator doors open, and they get in.

  A lot of the delegates at the conference are from out of town and are staying for the full three days that it’s on. In between sessions, and over dinners, they’ll be discussing everything from how the industry needs to embrace change to the vexed question of going public.

  Lebrecht can think of nothing worse.

  Cutting out early like this, not sticking around, gives him some satisfaction. But now he has to face an interview with a business journalist.

  In another hotel.

  More convoluted questions, more evasive answers.

  It’ll be a welcome distraction if she’s cute, but really, he has better uses for his time than that, too. Black Vine Partners is currently circling distressed European retailer Ballantine Marche, which fell into administra
tion last month. Plus, they’re trying to raise capital for a new mezzanine fund.

  He has stuff to do.

  The elevator door opens, and they head out across the lobby.

  It’s probably fair to say that Black Vine Media takes up more of his time than it should, but he’s determined to make it work. If this movie comes together, Shem Tyner or no Shem Tyner, they could have a valuable franchise on their hands.

  Young Adult Post-Apocalyptic meets High School Gross-out.

  As they approach the exit, Baxter puts a hand up to his earpiece. “You want to talk to Paris?”

  Lebrecht stops. “Yeah.”

  This’ll be Dan Travers, about Ballantine Marche.

  “Okay,” Baxter says, moving off. “I’ll be out at the car.”

  “Dan the Man,” Lebrecht says, leaning back a little to look up at the lobby’s soaring stained-glass dome. “Comment ça va?”

  * * *

  Sitting opposite a line of nervous-looking Japanese tourists on the downtown A train, Ellen Dorsey—sleep deprived, but hopped up on java—is feeling pretty nervous herself.

  It’s a different kind of nervous, though.

  She’s decided to head down to the Herald Rygate hotel in midtown and then … assess the situation. She won’t get past the lobby, because she’s not registered, or accredited, to attend the conference.

  So in all likelihood she won’t get to see Scott Lebrecht.

  But even if she did, if she pulled some ballsy reporter moves and got five minutes with him, what would she say? I’m running a story about an Internet post that suggests you as a suitable candidate for assassination? I was wondering if you’d care to comment?

  Yes, that probably is what she’d say. Except for one thing—she isn’t running the story anywhere. Because that’s all she’s got and it isn’t enough, and if she were to alert Lebrecht or the police, the story would get out at once and that’d be the end of any advantage she had.

  Or might have had.

  The train pulls into Seventy-second Street. The Japanese tourists get off and are replaced by three randoms—business guy in a suit, sultry teen boy, and a woman about Ellen’s own age but considerably better dressed.

  And saner-looking.

  The train rattles on.

  Ellen doesn’t really have any option here, does she? There’s no obvious solution that presents itself. She’s going to have to give this up.

  Sultry teen boy stifles a sneeze, which seems to hurt. He then looks around scowling, as if it was someone else’s fault.

  She’ll go into the Parallax offices and lay it all out for Max. She has a contact in the NYPD, and if it comes to it, she can make the call from there.

  She stares down at the floor.

  But first she’ll swing by the Rygate.

  Train pulls in at Fifty-ninth Street.

  It can’t hurt. She’ll wander around for a while, see what’s going on, play it by ear. Maybe inveigle her way in to the conference.

  She runs through a couple of scenarios in her head.

  A short time later, as the train is pulling out of Forty-second Street, she looks up again, at the seats opposite. Only one of the original three randoms is left.

  Her enhanced doppelgänger.

  They both get out at Thirty-fourth Street, and as Ellen trails behind, along the platform, she fantasizes briefly about having this woman’s life—the confidence to wear those clothes, the because-she’s-worth-it hair, the Jell-O-on-springs gait. But as they approach the stairs weariness prevails, slowing Ellen down, and the fantasy fragments, disassembles.

  The woman vanishes into the crowd.

  Up at street level, heading east, Ellen regroups, sort of. Even if she were to change her mind about the Rygate, she could still pass close by it on her way to the Parallax offices. She wouldn’t have to turn north for at least another few blocks.

  But she hasn’t changed her mind.

  A little sunshine has broken through, and the city is wet and glistening from the earlier rain.

  She walks on.

  A few minutes later she turns a corner and there it is, on the other side of Broadway—the Herald Rygate, town cars and limos lining the curb in front of it, drivers and doormen gathered under its awning.

  Pedestrians streaming by.

  Ellen pulls out her phone, checks the time, looks around, and starts crossing the street.

  * * *

  “So, you’d say five, six feet?”

  “Yeah, five, six.”

  “Five or six feet at the widest point?”

  “That’s correct, sir. The widest point.”

  “Which is at the bottom.”

  “Yeah.”

  “The bottom of the staircase?”

  “That’s correct, sir.”

  Out on the floor, Frank Bishop has one eye on a row of flat-screen LCD units tuned to live coverage of the Connie Carillo murder trial and one eye on the door. Lance took the call about an hour ago. It was while Frank was dealing with a customer.

  The regional manager, it seems, is going to be stopping by for a brief unscheduled visit.

  “On a Wednesday morning?” Lance said after the call. “What’s that about?”

  Frank shrugged, his insides turning, Monday’s conversation replaying one more time in his head. There’s no doubt about it, he had a legitimate grievance. Those fifty LudeX consoles? Any manager would have been up in arms about that.

  But how many would have called it a fucking joke?

  On top of various other insults.

  Pretty tense now, Frank is grateful for the intermittent distraction of the Carillo stuff on the store’s multiple TV screens. In his second week on the stand, Joey Gifford, the so-called celebrity doorman, is being cross-examined by prosecution counsel Ray Whitestone. For reasons Frank is unclear about, questions are currently focusing on particular architectural features of the lobby in the Park Avenue apartment building where Gifford has worked for nearly forty years—and through which Connie Carillo herself is in the habit of passing every morning at seven with her two dogs.

  “Now, Mr. Gifford,” Whitestone is saying, “would you please describe for the court the decorative brass radiator grille that is set in the wall of the lobby at the bottom of the staircase.”

  As Gifford clears his throat to speak, Frank detects some movement from behind, and turns.

  Walking across the floor, directly toward him, is Mike, the baby-faced regional manager, and another guy. Mike is in a suit, and the other guy, who looks even younger than Mike, is wearing a zipped-up leather jacket, but with a Paloma shirt on underneath it.

  Frank can see the logo sewn into the collar.

  “Hi, Mike,” he says, and then adds—as though responding to some Pavlovian trigger, unable not to—“who’s your little friend?”

  Mike rolls his eyes. “Say hello to Josh, Frank. He’s the new manager here.”

  “Here?”

  Mike nods.

  Of course. What was he expecting? Some kind of reasoned negotiation? A lively exchange of views? An apology? Letting it sink in, Frank just stands there and says nothing. Logically, this is where he should start groveling, begging to keep his job, but he knows now that he’s not going to do that.

  After a moment, Mike says, “You have fifteen minutes to get your stuff and leave.”

  Frank looks at him. “Or else?”

  “No severance package. You’ll be deemed to have acted in contravention of the regulations as set down in the employee handbook.”

  “I see.”

  “And can basically go fuck yourself.”

  Frank nods, fighting a strong impulse here to lash out, with his fists.

  But he doesn’t.

  “Good for you, Mike,” he says eventually, his stomach still churning. “I was worried there for a moment that you’d left your balls back at head office.” Smiling, he turns and moves off in the direction of the storeroom.

  Ten minutes later, out in the parking lot, under a thin
veil of rain, Frank calls Lizzie.

  He needs to hear her voice now. It’s a matter of priorities, of perspective.

  He waits.

  She doesn’t answer.

  He squeezes the phone in his hand and represses an urge to fling it to the ground.

  “I appear to be busy.” Her outgoing message. “But say something if you want, after the beep.”

  Languid and annoying maybe, but it’s all he’s getting, and as usual he’ll take it.

  “Lizzie, it’s Dad. Call me when you get a chance, will you?”

  It suddenly occurs to him that this is probably the fourth or fifth time since Saturday evening that he’s tried, without success, to contact his daughter. Which isn’t normal. So should he be panicking? He tries to keep any trace of this out of his voice.

  “Any time, sweetheart, okay?” He pauses. “Okay?”

  Not much success there either.

  “Just call me.” He gazes around, at the desolate parking lot, at the overcast sky. “I love you, Lizzie.”

  * * *

  The driver is leaning back against the car door, arms folded.

  Baxter catches his eye and holds up an outstretched hand.

  Five minutes.

  The driver nods an acknowledgment.

  Then Baxter looks left and right.

  Broadway.

  Torrents of people and traffic.

  Not exactly ideal working conditions, but he stands there anyway, under the Rygate awning next to a doorman and a couple of other drivers, and takes out his BlackBerry. He checks for e-mails. As expected there are dozens, so he tries to block out the noise and starts scrolling down through them. In a matter of minutes he manages to clear six or seven, sometimes using only a one- or two-word reply. He’s good at this kind of stuff, the guerrilla approach—not that Lebrecht would ever give him any credit for it, or thanks.

  Baxter glances around.

  It’s funny what Lebrecht said earlier, that some of the older guys up in the Melmotte Room think of him as the kid—because compared to them, that’s precisely what he is, a fucking kid. Baxter has worked for those guys, and they’re very serious, very focused, very conservative. Okay, Lebrecht is on a roll, making insane money, but none of it’s his, and it won’t last. He’s too volatile, too unstable, and too attached to this notion of taking Hollywood by storm.