23 | DIMAGGIO
January 31, 2006
I FINISH MY MORNING SHOWER AND SHAVE AT THE club, where I keep a suit in my locker. I want to keep my distance from William’s problem as much as possible, so I tell him I need to run some errands and won’t be in the office first but will meet him at the appointment. I get a taxi to the DA’s office all the way downtown. I haven’t been there before, and the taxi drops me in front of an office building that looks as though the architect’s instructions were to make it look as drab and depressing as possible. Across the way is Columbus Park, which has a few sickly trees, patches of grass, and benches sunk into concrete. Only Manhattan would call this a park.
Getting through security is easier than the airports. I put my wallet and watch in a plastic dish and pass through the metal detector while lawyers and staff with badges just breeze around the whole setup. There are three elevators and I take one to the sixth floor for our meeting. I step off the elevator into a main corridor that must be fifty yards long with small tributary halls shooting off the sides. The floor is the plastic-looking Kentile from the first half of the last century, made worse by the inconsistent fluorescent lighting hanging from a ceiling that hasn’t seen new paint since they stopped making Kentile floors. The corridor is lined with cheap metal filing cabinets and natural wood benches outside the office doors. There’s a big difference between a government office and a Bear Stearns office. For the price of one piece of our lobby art, they could redo this whole place.
I walk to the conference room the ADA has reserved for our meeting. A man in a suit is standing by the door and sees me approaching.
“Mr. Farmer?”
“Yes.” We shake hands. He must be the defense attorney because his suit is too nice and his hair too perfect for a government employee. His hair is completely gray but so full and groomed it’s hard to believe it’s gray. It has the thickness that usually only a kid can have. He has a ruddy face and is otherwise unremarkable. Average height, weight, and looks. Probably relates well to a jury.
“Thank you for coming. I’m Alan Gallagher. The ADA is inside. Peter Jeffries. You can go right in. William is waiting down the hall. I’m going to visit with him briefly, then I’ll be back and we’ll get started.” He smiles but it’s awkward and he looks around. I follow his eyes and see a woman seated on a bench near the door. She’s in a plain, matronly dress that can’t hide her stripper body, stripper fake tan, bleached hair, and ankle tattoos. The clothes are overwhelmed by the woman. She’s very attractive, though she looks like she’s been crying. This must be the girl.
“That’s fine.”
William’s lawyer opens the door for me and I walk into a small conference room as drab as the building exterior. Nothing on the walls but white paint, a single window with bars across it, and a rectangular table that fits six chairs that don’t roll but need to be scraped across an ancient plastic tile.
Peter Jeffries stands from the head of the rectangle and comes to shake my hand. “Thank you for coming, Mr. Farmer.”
“Of course.” There’s also a uniformed detective in the room, which is jarring but shouldn’t surprise me. It’s not the same cop who was at the Soho Grand.
“This is Detective Kelly, who has been handling the complaint. This shouldn’t take much of your time, Mr. Farmer. The DA’s office is determining whether or not to proceed with criminal prosecution in this matter. Your input will be taken into consideration as a part of our evaluation.”
Lawyers always use too many words. “All right.”
“I’ll ask you a few questions about Mr. William Lansing. We’ll begin once his lawyer is present. Answer honestly and fully.”
I nod. We wait less than a minute in silence, then the door opens without a knock and William’s lawyer walks in. The ADA stands, then sits without shaking any hands, more like someone bumped the back of his chair. I never leave my seat. I assume William’s lawyer is here because the ADA wants to make some kind of deal.
“Let’s get started.” The ADA is already out of patience. “Mr. Farmer, your presence here will be required for only a short time, after which I will conclude my meeting with Mr. Lansing, then with the accuser.” He clears his throat. “Mr. Farmer, I’m going to ask you a few questions about Mr. Lansing.”
I nod again.
“Mr. Lansing is currently in your employ?”
“He’s employed by Bear Stearns. He reports to me.”
“Fine. As part of your supervision of Mr. Lansing, do you conduct performance reviews?”
“I do.”
“Would you be willing to share these reviews with me in cooperation with my investigation?”
“I can fax the paperwork this afternoon. A lot of the review happens orally.”
“In addition to faxing the reviews you have filed, and please fax from as many years back as you have, would you please also describe the nature of the most recent review you gave Mr. Lansing?”
“William got an above-average review. He’s a reliable employee, he shows up on time, rarely calls in sick, works hard, gets along with other employees, and his sales numbers are above the average for his position.”
“To your knowledge, have there been any disciplinary incidents with Mr. Lansing?”
“No.”
“Okay. Fine.” He seems like he’s about to take a different tack with the questioning and he physically adjusts also. “Some of the following questions will be more subjective. Please do your best to answer.”
I nod.
“Please describe, in your own words, Mr. Lansing. His character.”
Jesus Christ. “I don’t socialize with William much out of the office. We’re very different ages and I’m his boss.”
“Did you attend the party at the Soho Grand on the night in question?”
Goddamn it. “Yes, for less than an hour early in the night. It started as a work function for clients.”
“Was Mr. Lansing there when you were there?”
“He arrived as I was leaving.”
“So you occasionally see Mr. Lansing outside the office?” He pauses for effect. “For drinks from time to time.”
“Yes.” I’m starting to dislike the ADA.
“And in the totality of your experience with Mr. Lansing on these occasions, please describe his character.”
He sounds smug and my dislike for him is probably going to play to William’s benefit because I’d really like to shove something down the ADA’s throat. “He seems like an okay guy.” I sound a little smug now and immediately regret it.
“Does he drink liquor?”
“Yes.”
“Frequently?”
“He drinks with customers. I don’t know about other times.”
“Does he use illicit drugs?”
I pause. Damn. Whether or not I do shouldn’t be relevant, but managing an employee that I know uses illicit drugs could be a problem. “I’ve not seen him take an illicit drug.” This is actually true. Thank God for private bathrooms.
“Do you suspect that he does?”
“It’s possible.”
“Okay. Fine.” He’s enjoying this but doesn’t go after me further on this point. I’m sure for the purpose of this evaluation he knows William does cocaine. The police report from the Soho Grand would probably take care of that. “Does Mr. Lansing attend strip clubs?”
“Yes.”
“Does he hire the services of prostitutes?”
“Same as the illicit drugs. It’s possible but I’ve never watched him having sex.” Jesus, I need to be careful.
The detective laughs a little, which is the first evidence he is listening. He otherwise seems bored and not motivated to pursue a case. The ADA is not amused and continues. “Okay, Mr. Farmer. Mr. Lansing is accused of aggravated assault and rape. What is your reaction to this charge?”
This is the one I really don’t want to answer. I’ve been thinking about it so that I’d be prepared but haven’t been able to come up with the answer, so now I’m still stuck and hesitating. I want to be noncommittal, but noncommittal hangs him out to dry and I can’t do that.
The ADA slides three photographs across the table to me. One is of the girl’s face with a black eye and swollen upper lip. She looks like she hasn’t slept in days. Her hair is oily and hangs in strings that are pushed out of the way of her bruises. The other photographs show raw and broken skin around her wrists and ankles.
I can’t take my eyes from the purple and black colors that stain the young girl. The things I hate about work, or about anything, I keep at arm’s length, but the ADA won’t let me get away with that here. He shoves the images into me like a knife with practiced technique, then watches the physical changes in me. I can’t just intellectualize about a rape anymore because it’s in my face now. I’m staring at what the girl says William did, and I’m trying to keep my face still but I’m disgusted.
The truth is that I don’t know William well enough to vouch for him, but I’ve known a lot of guys like him. Wall Street guys like coke and hookers, but violence isn’t in the gene. They tend to get off on power in a different way.
“William’s not a rapist.” I say it though I’m not sure of it.
“Okay. Thank you, Mr. Farmer. We’re done here.”
“Okay.” I stand and nod to each of the three of them.
I step outside the room and close the door behind me. I turn and find the stripper now standing by the bench. I don’t know why I can’t identify her as the woman and not the stripper, but I can’t. She’s looking right at me.
“You work with him?”
“I do.” I break eye contact and make for the elevator.
She lets me get a few steps. “He’s a sick bastard. He’ll do it to someone else.” She hurls the words into my back. In that moment she seems more like a girl and less like a stripper and I feel sick.
I don’t turn but get in the elevator and leave the building. I feel too claustrophobic with my own thoughts to get in a taxi and I want to walk, so I head for that crappy Columbus Park and just walk in a circle around it, then sit on a bench in the cold.
Thirty minutes later my phone rings and it’s William.
“Heya, Nick.”
“Hey.”
“The ADA indicated to her lawyer that there probably isn’t enough to proceed criminally. Apparently there are some real credibility problems with the girl. I think she’s cried rape before. Anyway, my lawyer headed off a civil suit and just brokered a deal with her lawyer for twenty-five grand. I’m sure your interview with the ADA was a big help. Thanks. It’s over.”
“You happy?”
“Extremely.”
“Right.” I hang up.
A minute later from my bench I can see William come out of the building and hail a taxi. He has a big smile. There’s nothing about Bear or the DA’s office or this city that will stop William or even slow him down. The only thing that might punish William is inside William, and that won’t happen because the system is rigged to reinforce to him that he’s doing things exactly the right way.
? ? ?
An hour later I force my freezing body from the bench and get a taxi back to the office. I walk across the massive trading floor with coffee and an egg sandwich, navigating through the long desks like aisles in a grocery store. I have an empty and friendless feeling.
I see my vacant desk chair and Bloomberg terminal and wish I could pass it by as though it were a hallucination that I could medicate away. But it’s still there when I get to it, so I put down my coffee and sit.
Before I’ve reversed my momentum to roll the chair forward to the desk, Jerry has a hand on my shoulder. “Good to have you back, buddy.”
“Hey. You really had your eyes peeled for me.”
“I need to get you up to speed. We have some telecom bonds we need to buy. The i-bankers are structuring a new debt issuance. You know the one.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“We need to buy up the secondary market bonds from the last issuance. Keep buying up to ninety-three.”
“They’re not worth ninety-three.”
“They will be. Keep buying and push up the price. They want to see some upward movement in support of the new issuance.”
“Crap.”
“Ninety-three.”
I eat my sandwich and make a few calls. The bonds are well offered at ninety-two, and I lift from a few different shops.
William walks to his desk across from me with a smile on his face suggesting that something must be going his way. Maybe the same smile he has always had, but today it strikes me that he will succeed in this place and without hesitation or compromise. William’s success will be different from the roly-poly and gruff Jerry Cavanaugh’s. Jerry is indifferent to all the crap of our industry, but William enjoys it. He revels in it and will be able to manipulate it to work for him. I find myself staring at his face as though I’m alone in a room studying a photograph, and I no longer see a person but the face of a virus. A virus that can fill a suit and wear a tie and is massive in ambition, limitless and insatiable, consuming the physical world and destroying souls because it has no soul of its own to care for, sacrificing everything spiritual for meeting the primal with excess. Everything you can eat, drink, and screw and snort up your nose. But I know the happiness can be only on the primal level too, like a smile on a dog.
Still staring at William, I wonder what will be his happiest day. He’s made it clear it won’t be his wedding. For the birth of a son, I imagine he will spend the hours of his wife’s labor with friends in a bar around the corner from the hospital and be very drunk when the baby arrives. His happiest day will not be connected to anything external to himself. It will be the day he consumed the most. The day he gets a ten-million-dollar bonus or a twenty-four-hour stretch in Las Vegas when he wins at the craps table, covers the spread on the Super Bowl, takes a few hits of ecstasy, snorts a gram of blow, and has sex with five strippers who are all sisters.
I know I can feel more than this. I can feel good and bad on an order higher than what is only primal, away from a virus eating through flesh.
I look away from William as though I’m coming out of a trance, trying to decipher the images that have just come to me and not conscious of how long I’ve been under.
On William’s desk is the Jenny McCarthy Playboy centerfold spread over his computer keyboard. “William. We actually have a few women working here.”
He seems to acknowledge but draw no conclusions.
“Why don’t you put that in a drawer before someone has to fire you.”
“Sure, Nick. Sorry.”
I want to sit up from my desk as though I sense it causing an allergic reaction, constricting the air passageways in my throat and making my breathing weak and shallow. I feel like I’m cracking up. I need a vacation from this place. The days away have shown only that I need many more.
“Hey, Nick.”
“Yeah, Ron?” He’s gotten out of his chair and walked over next to me and is speaking in a quiet tone.
“Can I ask you something?” I can never get over the irony of this question.
“Sure.”
“Do you think that it can be the same person for both love and sex or that the two things are different enough that it would have to be two different people and that to make it one person necessitates a compromise?”
I give Ron a look that I hope says I want no part of this conversation, but I make the mistake of not actually cutting him off. He somehow interprets it as curiosity.
“See, what I mean is, with love there’s this trust and intimacy. That’s all great but it’s kind of safe and it’s not the person you lose control over and want to tear her clothes off. With the best sex there’s total abandon and maybe some risk and doubt and then physical heights. It can be aggressive and conquering and not so safe and trusting, with everything already explored and understood. It’s wilder and dirtier and probably not with the person who would then be your first choice to talk about your favorite books with. And the person you talk about books with may not be the first person you want to have crazy sex with. I’m not saying one person can’t be good at both things. I’m saying one person can’t be number one in both things. There has to be a compromise to choose one person. Right?”
“Jesus Christ, Ron. I don’t want to know you like this. Go ask William. He seems to have all this figured out.”
He looks at me wide-eyed and blank. Of possible responses, this is not one he had anticipated. “You’re an ass.”
“Exactly how you should feel about me. Get back to work. Go sell some bonds.”
I stand up and walk away before he can leave. I think Ron may not be such a terrible kid and has about a year left to be saved from all this. I could fire him but that wouldn’t be enough to do it. He needs to fire the industry.
I grab my coat and walk to the elevator and leave the building. I decide to walk to the subway station for the 6 train and the walking feels good, like I’m occupied and getting somewhere. The sidewalks are full of brisk walkers, but each is closed off from the others like letters dropped through different mail chutes. Their eyes are ahead and slightly down as they travel over a path they have beaten many times before. Their focus is entirely on delivering themselves to the destination and not on what they may encounter along the way. There is no interaction among people, but possibly because there are too many people. To pass a single person in an entire block would require a hello. To pass one hundred people in a single block requires efficiency and skills of self-preservation.
When I stop at a street kiosk to buy a newspaper, I see the most closed of all. His eyes averted, he looks ready to collect my change and move me on like a package on a conveyor belt. But in response to my smile and hello, his veneer cracks. In one moment he mentions the plight of the Knicks, the NFL playoffs, and the weather. His pent-up niceness comes bursting through like a volcanic eruption through the crust of the earth. Each of the people on the sidewalk may have their own lava to come out with only the prick of a pin.
I tuck the paper under my arm and walk down the steps to the subway trains.
In my subway car alone I see East Asian, Indian, black, Hispanic, and white people, from young to ancient, from suits to tattoos. The mixing process is so complete that even in this car of thirty people, they’re all here. This is the real New York, all the rest that is outside the walls of the investment banks. It reminds me how small and pathetic my life inside those walls can be. Rich but pathetic. I can’t remember the last time I rode the subway.
I climb out of the subway near Union Square and start for the Cedar Tavern for an early lunch and a drink. I haven’t spoken with Julia in a few days now, and I pull out my cell phone to call her. I dial her cell phone so she’ll see my number on her caller ID and she can decide whether or not she wants to pick up.
“Hi, Nick.”
“Hey. How are you?”
“Okay.” She pauses. I guess we both do. “Where are you?” Her question is not accusing or demanding. Just soft and curious.
“I’m back in the city.”
“How was your trip?”
“Fine.” There’s another long pause. I start to regret having called. It’s too clear that we’re talking without saying anything.
“Are you coming home tonight?”
“Yes, not till late, though. There’s a dinner I have to go to.” This is part truth, part lie. There’s no work dinner but I intend to stay at Cedar Tavern drinking by myself until late before going home.
“Okay.”
I clear my throat. I want to change the conversation but I can’t begin to put the words together.
“Nick.” She says my name but seems also to fail at the next words. She leaves it hanging in the air, and my instinct is to help it the way a person sees a pencil rolling off a table’s edge and flashes a hand toward it by reflex.
“Yes?” I’ve helped. I wait again.
“I miss us.”
I’m silent now, thinking about those three words, and in particular the last one. She didn’t say that she missed me. She didn’t say that she missed the Nick Farmer who is walking on Fourteenth Street on January 31, 2006. She said she misses “us,” an entity neither of us has seen in a long time and which is possibly irrecoverable. She doesn’t say she wants me to come home. She seems to say she wants me to go back in time and recover something I’ve lost, then for that person to come home. I don’t know how to respond to this and so I tell her the truth. “I don’t know what to say to that, Julia.”
“No.” She utters this, it seems, more to herself than to me. “Well, I guess I’ll see you later.”
For a moment I wonder if my interpretation of her words is too negative. She had reached out and I shut it down the way I shut down every other person’s attempt to reach me. “Yes, I’ll be late tonight, so maybe in the morning.” She still seems able to open a door for us. I need to pull myself together and walk through it before it’s too late.
“Look, I’m sorry. I just had to tell the assistant district attorney that a guy who is a piece of crap is actually all right.”
“What?”
“Never mind. Can we talk later?”
“Okay. Bye.”
I put the phone back in my pocket and I see the sign for Cedar Tavern a block away. I feel more tense than ever and fear that I’ve just made a colossal and avoidable blunder by not going to Julia right now, and the consequences are already falling on me like lead weight. I can feel the muscles in the back of my neck.
Cedar Tavern is so dark inside that it’s a strange place to enter in the middle of the day. I walk to a booth in the back while my eyes adjust. I pass by the bar stools. I don’t want the persistent and stalking presence of a bartender while I pass the hours. I slide across the leather seat of the booth and angle my back to the corner against the wall and settle in with my first drink. I get only a beer as I want a drink but also want to make it the whole day here and not pass out.
The booth feels safe and comfortable to me. I don’t have another place to escape to. There’s no home and no place of work I can run to. Like DiMaggio in his late years trying hopelessly to make a home of an upstairs room at the Olympic Club with not much to do but meet a dwindling number of old buddies and admirers for a drink in the club bar. I’ll make it home eventually, but I think late enough and drunk enough to avoid a conversation.
My cell phone buzzes with a text message and I assume it will be Julia but I recognize it as Rebecca’s number.
lost in the village—come help me
I think about dropping everything and getting a taxi to wherever she is. Then I think about what I would do tomorrow. I think most single or married guys I know would jump at this, but I’m already so dejected with myself I can’t handle the idea of it. It would be great for a few hours, then I’d feel miserable and trapped in a prison I made for myself. William’s theory on this is right. If I feel that urge, it’s safer and easier just to get a hooker, but I don’t want to do that either.
out of town. ur on ur own
I stare at the phone in my hand like a woman waiting for the double lines of a pregnancy test and wishing I hadn’t shortened you’re and your to ur because it looks so ridiculous.
some hero you are
Right. I turn off my phone for the night and get a bourbon. I sip it and think of my phone turned off and feel that I’ve conquered some small thing. I start to drink a silent toast to myself and then decide screw it, I need to say it out loud like taking an oath. With bourbon at eye level I say, “You’re a good person, Nick. You deserve better. Settle for more.”
Anyone overhearing this would think I’m speaking to a departed friend, and I hope it does signal a death and rebirth. It’s up to me.
I stare at the bourbon left in my glass and issue a silent challenge. In a violent sip I finish it. I don’t only finish it, I vanquish it. I don’t want any more, and I think in a few minutes’ walk from this bar I can be to St. Vincent’s Hospital to visit Jack. I haven’t seen him in a while and I need to.
It had been a massive heart attack, and I know from William that Jack is still in the hospital getting tests. I hadn’t thought of visiting Jack as something I would do, but now I’m certain it will make me feel better and might be good for him.
I walk into the cardiac ward and ask at the nursing station for Jack.
“Oh, Mr. Wilson,” the nurse says, smiling. “He’s made quite an impression on us already.”
I take her meaning literally. I could make a joke here but hospitals always make me so damn uncomfortable. I feel like I’m supposed to be sad and respectful, so I don’t say anything.
“He’s in three forty-two. He’s awake.”
“Thanks.”
I walk into Jack’s room and he’s lying in one of those mechanical beds that has his head slightly elevated. There are all sorts of wires connecting his body to machines that are beeping like crazy. He’s watching TV and looks as white as the sheets.
“Hey, buddy.”
“Nick!” He lights up seeing me but his voice is still weak. I’m watching the numbers on the machines like a hawk and I see one of them start to rise. I think it’s the heart rate.
“You’ve looked better.”
“Yeah. I feel fine.”
“Good.”
“Thanks for the help. I appreciate the soft landing.”
“I didn’t have a choice. You had a hell of a grip on me.”
There’s a chair under the wall-mounted TV and I sit. The room is all white with a little window looking over Seventh Avenue. We could probably squeeze two more people in here with all the machines and crap. “What did the doctors say?”
“They say I’ll recover. I need to take it easy.”
“Yeah? You’re going to take it easy?”
“I am. No booze, no coke.” He pauses. “No work.”
“For how long?”
“For however long I have left. Hopefully a while.”
“You’re quitting?”
“Already did. Only took a phone call.”
“When?”
“This morning.”
I lean back in the chair trying to digest this. Jack is delivering this like happy news. It also feels like genuinely happy news. “Great.”
“Chappy said to take as much time as I need but I’m done. I told them I’m resigning. I can’t go back.” He smiles. “The doctors said keeping on with a job like mine is a death sentence.”
“Yeah.”
“You and I knew that a long time ago.”
I nod. “Yeah.”
We’re silent for a while, listening to the TV over my head. Jack is watching me, though. He continues, “I thought about getting out for years and never was able to bring myself to do it. In a way, I got off easy. My body put its foot down and it didn’t kill me. It’s amazing, but I feel happy. Even my ex-wife seems to like me now.”
“She’s been to visit?”
“Round the clock. She’ll be back in about an hour.” He puts his hands up to say, Can you believe it? “We’ve been pouring our hearts out, so to speak. It’s been weird but interesting. Who knows?”
“Good for you, Jack.” He looks calm and happy. He seems different. Better. Even the way he talks is a little different, like he stopped trying to win over the whole world all the time.
He can still read people, though. “How are you doing?”
The true answer is probably not as well as Jack. “I’m going to leave soon too. I’m going to do it.”
“I recommend it. The water is fine.”
A nurse comes through the door and goes straight to Jack. There’s no pause for an invitation or even a hello. “I’m going to check your vitals, Mr. Wilson.”
“Hi, Krista. You know, the best a woman can look with clothes on is in a nurse outfit. I tell you what.”
Krista the nurse has a modicum of cuteness, nothing more. And that’s beside the point. Or maybe it just adds a very little something to the main point. It’s clear some things with Jack are going to take a while to change and I decide that’s reassuring.
Neither Krista nor I acknowledges the remark and she goes on about her business. It’s a private moment and a good excuse to go. “I’m glad you’re okay. Take it easy on the nurses.” I stand and give him a handshake, picking up where we had left off the last one.
“I’ll see you around, Nick.”