“I’m telling you, we could be in and out in two years,” Piasecki was saying. “Do it nice and easy and leave no trail. Then we invest our money and do our part for the GDP.”
What was a poet but a guy who lived in a fantasy world? Who dreamed instead of did. What would it be like to do? To apply your brain to the palpable universe of money instead of the intangible realm of words?
He would never tell Stephanie about any of this. He’d tell her he’d been given a raise. Simultaneous with this thought was another: renovating your kitchen wasn’t a red flag. They could do the whole interior without attracting attention.
In his mind Kendall saw his fixer-upper as it would be a year or two from now: modernized, insulated, warm, his children happy, his wife repaid for everything she’d done for him.
Wealth circulates with inconceivable rapidity …
The full enjoyment of it …
“OK, I’m in,” Kendall said.
“You’re in?”
“Let me think about it.”
That was sufficient for Piasecki for now. He lifted his glass. “To Ken Lay,” he said. “My hero.”
*
“What sort of business is this you’re opening?”
“It’s a storage facility.”
“And you’re?”
“The president. Co-president, actually.”
“With Mr.”—the lawyer, a squat woman with thatchlike hair, searched on the incorporation form—“Mr. Piasecki.”
“That’s right,” Kendall said.
It was a Saturday afternoon. Kendall was in downtown Oak Park, in the lawyer’s meager, diploma-lined office. Max was outside on the sidewalk, catching autumn leaves as they twirled to the ground. He ran back and forth, his arms outstretched.
“I could use some storage,” the lawyer joked. “My kids’ sports equipment is crazy. Snowboards, surfboards, tennis rackets, lacrosse sticks. I can barely fit my car into the garage.”
“We do commercial storage,” Kendall said. “Warehousing. For corporations. Sorry.”
He hadn’t even laid eyes on the place. It was up in the sticks, outside Kewanee. Piasecki had driven up there and leased the land. There was nothing on it but an old, weed-choked Esso station. But it had a legal address, and soon, as Midwestern Storage, a steady income.
Since Great Experiment sold few books, the publishing company had a lot of inventory on hand. In addition to storing them in their usual warehouse, in Schaumburg, Kendall would soon start sending a phantom number of books up to the facility in Kewanee. Midwestern Storage would charge Great Experiment for this service, and Piasecki would send the company checks. As soon as the incorporation forms were filed, Piasecki planned to open a bank account in Midwestern Storage’s name. Signatories to this account: Michael J. Piasecki and Kendall Wallis.
It was all quite elegant. Kendall and Piasecki would own a legal company. The company would earn money legally, pay its taxes legally; the two of them would split the profit and claim it as business income on their tax returns. Who was ever to know that the warehouse housed no books because there was no warehouse?
“I just hope the old guy doesn’t kick,” Piasecki had said. “We’ve got to pray for Jimmy to stay healthy.”
When Kendall had signed the required forms, the lawyer said, “OK, I’ll file these papers for you Monday. Congratulations, you’re the proud new owner of a corporation in the state of Illinois.”
Outside, Max was still whirling beneath the falling leaves.
“How many did you catch, buddy?” Kendall asked.
“Twenty-two!” Max shouted.
Kendall looked up at the sky to watch the leaves, red and gold, spinning down toward the earth. He tucked the papers he was holding under his arm.
“Five more and we have to go home,” Kendall said.
“Ten!”
“OK, ten. Ready? Leaf-catching Olympics starts—now!”
*
And now it was a Monday morning in January, the start of a new week, and Kendall was on the train again, reading about America: “There is one country in the world where the great social revolution that I am speaking of seems to have nearly reached its natural limits.” Kendall had a new pair of shoes on, two-tone cordovans from the Allen Edmonds store on Michigan Avenue. Otherwise, he looked the way he always did, same chinos, same shiny-elbowed corduroy jacket. Nobody on the train would have guessed that he wasn’t the mild, bookish figure he appeared to be. No one would have imagined Kendall making his weekly drop-off at the mailbox outside the all-cash building (to keep the doormen from noticing the deposit envelopes addressed to the Kewanee bank). Seeing Kendall jotting figures in his newspaper, most riders assumed he was working out a Sudoku puzzle instead of estimating potential earnings from a five-year CD. Kendall in his editor-wear had the perfect disguise. He was like Poe’s purloined letter, hidden in plain sight.
Who said he wasn’t smart?
The fear had been greatest the first few weeks. Kendall would awaken at 3 a.m. with what felt like a battery cable hooked to his navel. What if Jimmy noticed the printing, shipping, and warehouse costs for the phantom books? What if Piasecki drunkenly confessed to a pretty bartender whose brother turned out to be a cop? Kendall’s mind reeled with potential mishaps and dangers. How had he got into something like this with someone like that? In bed beside Stephanie, who was sleeping the sleep of the just, Kendall lay awake for hours, visions of jail time and perp walks filling his head.
It got easier after a while. Fear was like any other emotion. From an initial stage of passionate intensity, it slowly ebbed until it became routine and then barely noticeable. Plus, things had gone so well. Kendall drew up separate checks, one for the books they actually printed and another for the books he and Piasecki pretended to. On Friday, Piasecki entered these debits in his accounts against weekly income. “It looks like a profit-loss,” he told Kendall. “We’re actually saving Jimmy taxes. He should thank us.”
“Why don’t we let him in on it, then?” Kendall said.
Piasecki only laughed. “Even if we did, he’s so out of it he wouldn’t remember.”
Kendall kept to his low-profile plan. As the bank account of Midwestern Storage slowly grew, the same beaten-up old Volvo remained in his driveway. The money stayed away from prying eyes. It showed only inside. In the interior. Every night when he came home, Kendall inspected the progress of the plasterers, carpenters, and carpet installers he’d hired. He was looking into additional interiors as well: the walled gardens of college-savings funds (the garden of Max, the garden of Eleanor); the inner sanctum of a SEP-IRA.