“No one wants to sue you. For reasons that I can’t fathom, he actually likes all of you. He misses you,” she said, hoping sarcasm hadn’t leached into her voice. She reached into her Bottega and held up her own copy of his personnel file. “And he is, from what I understand, rather good at what he does. There’s only love and more love in his performance reviews. It’s just one big happy bromance.”
“Having him here doesn’t look good.”
“Get over it. I promise you, your clients already have. You’re an investment bank. God, if the world can get over Eliot Spitzer and Hugh Grant, it can get over Richard Chapman.”
He rolled those magnificent blue eyes up at the tiles on the ceiling. He wasn’t even trying to hide his vexation. “Tell me: What do you know? Do you have any sense of what’s coming in the newspapers tomorrow? Or what will be online tonight?”
“The Middle East. Nude reality TV shows. Black boxes from aviation disasters. Taylor Swift. The usual.”
“But nothing about our employee.”
“Nothing about one of your managing directors—at least as far as I know.”
“At least as far as you know,” he repeated.
“That’s right.”
“Let’s talk more on Monday.”
“Let’s talk more tomorrow.”
“You really are working those billable hours, aren’t you?”
“I’m looking out for Richard Chapman. The billable hours are just a bonus,” she said, careful to smile in a manner that wasn’t in the slightest way disingenuous. She made a mental note that when she filled in her client on her meeting with Kirn, she would see if he had paid off Spencer Doherty.
…
Alone in his house, his wife and his daughter both down the hill at the Bronxville School, Richard made sure that there were no vultures—his new pet name for the news vans—and went outside. He popped the trunk to his Audi and stared at the wannabe Bierstadt, which was still streaked with the blood from a dead Russian pimp. He really did have to deal with it. Here he had nothing but time on his hands, and still he hadn’t called that detective’s cousin at NYU. Wasn’t there some expression about finding a busy person if you wanted to get something done? Maybe if he could just get the blood off the painting…
Maybe…nothing.
He recalled how he had tossed and turned on the futon last night and wished he had bought that hunting rifle. Or at least started the process. It would do him no good with Spencer—you couldn’t just lean back in a bar and reveal it like your hidden carry—but it might have given him some peace of mind when he thought of the Russians. He knew intellectually there was no reason to be scared for his family. They wanted the girls, not him. At least that’s what he was reminding himself now, in the clear light of day. It was in the small hours of the morning when all horrors seemed plausible. Even likely. Hadn’t his brother told him that Spencer was terrified?
Well, maybe Spencer should be terrified. There was a guy at Franklin McCoy from Texas who once said about a bastard CEO whose company they were trying to sell, “Some people just need killin’.” He said it with a twang that only appeared when he wanted to make a point. Well, in the Russians’ eyes, Spencer probably just needed killin’—and to them it wasn’t a joke.
Of course, Kristin would have been absolutely furious if he had brought home a rifle. She would have been convinced that he had, once and for all, lost his mind. And, perhaps, he had. Last night, he had stared up at the ceiling, awash in the superstitious fear that by failing to buy a weapon, he was inviting disaster: his family would be killed while a rifle lay dormant in its box in a gun store in Yonkers. If only…
If only…
Well, fuck the if onlys.
Fuck this goddamn painting.
Fuck Spencer Doherty.
Fuck the news vans and the Russians and the bastards he thought were his friends at Franklin McCoy.
He held the painting by two opposite sides of the frame as if it were a serving platter and marched to the bottom of his driveway. He stood before the antique wrought-iron post with his mailbox, raised the painting over his head, and then smashed it as hard as he could against the black metal finial, impaling it. Skewering it. The tip pierced the canvas, and the mailbox widened the gash. Then, the painting dangling on the post, he grabbed loose strips of it with his hands and shredded them, pulling them apart as if he were ripping the tenderloin from chicken breasts. He cursed it. He swore under his breath. And when he lifted the painting back off the post, the slivers dangled like entrails. For a moment he held it in his hands, unsure why he wasn’t wholly satisfied. But then he got it. Then he understood. He slammed the frame down onto the asphalt, splintering the wood on two sides and unhinging the corners.