“Given my performance, and given my tenure here, I wanted to ask if it might be possible to work out some kind of health-insurance coverage. I’ve—”
“Can’t do it,” Jimmy answered. The suddenness of his response was characteristic: it was the same kind of wall he’d put up all his life, a defense against the Polish kids who’d beat him up on his way home from school, against his own father, who’d told Jimmy he was a good-for-nothing who would never succeed in life, and, later on, against the vice cops who harassed the studio where Jimmy manufactured and sold his dirty magazines, against every business competitor who had tried to cheat him, and finally against the hypocrites and holier-than-thou politicians who undermined the First Amendment and wildly expanded the rights covered by the Second. “That was never part of your package. I’m running a nonprofit here, kiddo. Piasecki just sent me the statements. We’re in the red this year. We’re in the red every year. We publish all these important, foundational, patriotic books—essential books—and nobody buys them! The people in this country are asleep! We’ve got an entire nation on Ambien. Sandman Rove is blowing dust in everybody’s eyes.”
He went off on a tear, anathematizing Bush and Wolfowitz and Perle, but then he must have felt bad about avoiding the subject at hand because he came back to it, softening his tone. “Listen, I know you’ve got a family. You have to do what’s best for you. If you wanted to test your value out in the marketplace, I’d understand. I’d hate to lose you, Kendall, but I’d understand if you have to move on.”
There was silence on the line.
Jimmy said, “You think about it.” He cleared his throat. “So, since I’ve got you, tell me. How’s The Pocket Democracy coming?”
Kendall wished he could remain businesslike. But he couldn’t keep some bitterness out of his voice when he answered, “It’s coming.”
“When do you think you’ll have something to show me?”
“No idea.”
“What was that?”
“I’ve got no answer at the moment.”
“Look, I’m running a business here,” Jimmy said. “You think you’re the first editor I’ve had? No. I hire young people and swap them out when they move on. As you may choose to do. That’s how it works. No reflection on the job you’ve done, which has been first-rate. I’m sorry, kiddo. Let me know what you decide.”
By the time Kendall hung up, the sun was setting. The water reflected the gray-blue of the darkening sky, and the lights of the water-pumping stations had come on, making them look like a line of floating gazebos. Kendall slumped in his desk chair, the Xeroxed pages of Democracy in America spread out on the desk around him. His left temple throbbed. He rubbed his forehead and looked down at the page in front of him:
I do not mean that there is any lack of wealthy individuals in the United States; I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken stronger hold on the affections of men and where a profounder contempt is expressed for the theory of the permanent equality of property. But wealth circulates with inconceivable rapidity, and experience shows that it is rare to find two succeeding generations in the full enjoyment of it.
Kendall swiveled in his chair and grabbed the phone. He dialed Piasecki’s number and, after a single ring, Piasecki answered.
“Meet me at the Coq d’Or,” Kendall said.
“Now? What about?”
“I don’t want to discuss it on the phone. I’ll tell you when you get there.”
This was how you did it. This was taking action. In an instant, everything could change.
In the fading light Kendall walked from Lakeshore up to the Drake Hotel and into the street entrance of the bar. He got a booth in the back, away from the guy in a tux playing piano, ordered a drink, and waited for Piasecki.
It took him a half hour to arrive. As soon as Piasecki sat down, Kendall stared across the table and smiled. “About that idea you had the other day,” he said.
Piasecki gave him a sideways look. “You serious, or just playing around?”
“I’m curious.”
“Don’t fuck with me.”
“I’m not,” Kendall said. “I was just wondering. How would it work? Technically.”
Piasecki leaned closer to be heard over the tinkling music. “I never said what I’m about to say, OK?”
“OK.”
“If you do something like this, what you do is you set up a dummy company. You create invoices from this company. Then Great Experiment pays these invoices. After a few years, you close the account and liquidate the company.”
Kendall worked to understand. “But the invoices won’t be for anything. Won’t that be obvious?”
“When’s the last time Jimmy checked the invoices for anything? He’s eighty-two, for Christ’s sake. He’s out in California taking Viagra so he can bang some hooker. He’s not thinking about the invoices. His mind is occupied.”
“What if we get audited?”
This time it was Piasecki’s turn to smile. “I like how you say ‘we.’ That’s where I come in. If we get audited, who handles that? I do. I show the IRS the bills and the payments. Since our payments into the dummy company match the bills, everything looks fine. If we pay the right taxes on income, how is the IRS going to complain?”
It wasn’t all that complicated. Kendall wasn’t used to thinking this way, not just criminally but financially, but as his executive pour went down, he saw how it could work. He looked around the bar, at the businessmen boozing, making deals.
“I’m not talking about that much money,” Piasecki was saying. “Jimmy’s worth, like, eighty million. I’m talking maybe half a million for you, half a mil for me. Maybe, if things go smooth, a million each. Then we shut it down, cover our tracks, and move to Bermuda.”
With burning, needy eyes Piasecki said, “Jimmy makes more than a million in the markets every four months. It’s nothing to him.”
“What if something goes wrong? I’ve got a family.”
“And I don’t? It’s my family I’m thinking of. It’s not like things are fair in this country. Things are unfair. Why should a smart guy like you not get a little piece of the pie? Are you scared?”
“Yes,” Kendall said.
“If we do this, you should be scared. Just a little. Statistically, though, I’d put the chances of our getting caught at about one percent. Maybe less.”
For Kendall it was exciting just to be having this conversation. Everything about the Coq d’Or, from the fatty appetizers to the Tin Pan Alley entertainment to the faux-Napoleonic decor, suggested that it was still 1926. Kendall and Piasecki were leaning conspiratorially together, like a couple of old-time gangsters. They’d seen the Mafia movies, so they knew how to do it. Criminality wasn’t like poetry, where one movement succeeded another. The same scheming that had gone on in Chicago eighty years ago was going on now.