Graveland: A Novel Page 9

  Which is just a fantasy.

  He thinks he can do it, but Hollywood will chew him up and spit out the seeds.

  Baxter’s seen it before.

  And he’s not sure he wants to be around when it happens this time. The abuse he can put up with, because at the moment, with things going well, it’s casual and flippant, almost unthinking. But when Lebrecht starts throwing real tantrums?

  Forget about it.

  Baxter clears two more e-mails and puts his BlackBerry away.

  It might be time to move on, to look for something else.

  But right now he could do with an espresso.

  He steps forward a few paces and scopes out the immediate vicinity. Two blocks down there’s a Starbucks.

  He catches the driver’s eye again. “I need some coffee,” he says, over the sound of the traffic. “You want something?”

  The driver pushes himself forward from the car, clicks his tongue, and then says, “You want me to go? I’ll go.”

  Baxter is about to take him up on the offer when the driver’s eyes widen slightly and he nods at something—indicating to Baxter that he should turn around.

  Lebrecht.

  Shit.

  The driver straightens up. Baxter turns, thinking fuck it, he’ll get a coffee at the Wilson, and a proper one.

  With real cream.

  In that moment Lebrecht emerges from the revolving doors, and Baxter can tell he’s distracted, sulky—complications with Ballantine Marche, no doubt.

  He has that look.

  But in the next second, the look changes. Everything does, the air, the weight of things, the density, the speed at which they move.

  Lebrecht’s arms go up, his whole body recoiling from … what?

  Baxter turns to the right. There’s a guy rushing toward Lebrecht, his arm outstretched, something in his hand. The doorman of the Rygate, a bulky streak of gold and red in his overcoat, epaulettes, and Pershing hat, intervenes. He deflects the outstretched arm, but wrestles the guy as well, the two figures then careening toward Baxter himself, who steps back in horror, arms up and out, glaring down at his shoes. But the entangled figures keep coming, and a full-on collision is inevitable. It’s like a football tackle, with Baxter suddenly deciding he has to resist, arms bunched in tight now, upper body pushing forward and over them. But on contact he loses his balance and falls, rolling off the doorman’s back and onto the sidewalk.

  There are voices, roars, shouts, but in all the confusion, as he clambers up, hand on the front of a town car next to Lebrecht’s limo, Baxter has no clear idea of what he’s hearing. Nor, when he turns around and manages to focus, does he have much idea of what he’s seeing, either.

  Because there on the ground, still struggling, are the doorman and what Baxter can only assume is a gunman, while a few feet away there appears to be a separate struggle going on, as two of the limo drivers try to restrain a second man.

  Behind them, a stunned Lebrecht staggers backward, stopping at the granite wall beside the revolving doors.

  Baxter doesn’t see any blood or obvious wound.

  But then, why would he?

  And it’s only in that moment, as he hears the gunshot ring out, that he realizes why he wouldn’t—

  Because there was no gunshot before.

  There’s certainly one now, though, and it’s followed by a general recoil, a shocked pulling away, which loosens up the two nodal points of the skirmish. In the next couple of seconds the gunman on the ground, along with his accomplice, breaks free. They start running, but in different directions—one to the nearest corner, the other out into the traffic, where he proceeds to zigzag his way through the midmorning chaos of Broadway.

  Lebrecht’s driver, standing next to Baxter, decides to give chase and slides over the front of the town car onto the street.

  But he is immediately thwarted—blocked by a passing MTA bus.

  Baxter turns around again. Like everyone else here, he’s in shock, and having a hard time processing what has happened—in particular the fact that when the gunman discharged his weapon a few moments ago someone apparently took the bullet …

  It was—he sees now—one of the other drivers.

  He’s alive, still standing, but clutching his side, a fellow driver giving him support. The doorman, back on his feet, is there as well, and on a cell phone, wild-eyed, waving his free hand around, calling 911.

  In a sort of post-traumatic slo-mo, Baxter then does a general pan of the area. No one is walking by the front of the hotel, they’re going around it, actually stepping out onto the street to avoid the sidewalk. It’s like some collective but unspoken agreement to preserve the crime scene. There are onlookers, but they’ve formed a partial cordon to the left and right—a no-go area also loosely defined from above by the perimeter of the hotel’s awning.

  Within this shaded rectangle of sidewalk, a handful of people stand, or move slowly, making eye contact with one another, shaking their heads in disbelief, waiting. Baxter glances over at Lebrecht, who’s still at the granite wall, looking pale and shaken.

  Their eyes meet.

  Lebrecht raises an index finger and points it inward, effectively poking himself in the chest, and mouthing, “Me? That was meant for me?”

  Baxter shrugs and emits the requisite degree of incredulity, but he experiences something else here, too, a flicker of … what? Ambivalence? Disappointment? To deflect whatever it is he looks away, and that’s when he sees her.

  She’s standing just inside the perimeter, to the left, staring at him, holding up her phone, a woman in her late thirties, early forties, dressed all in black.

  Not just an onlooker, not just a bystander.

  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?”

&n
bsp; “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

  ON 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.”

  S
he 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.