Their wealth came from hundreds of millions in commissions sucked out of the Cardinal Capital Fund in untraceable fees, from the invested pensions of state workers, from the salaries of cops and teachers. Mike used those dollars to push reforms that turned dollars into votes, to disrupt a functioning democracy, to seize power for his own enrichment. He managed the savings of workers while maiming their rights through his philanthropy.
Most people figure out how to get by, save some and waste the rest, while the thought of dominating humanity might pass by in a daydream. I personally had no longing for supremacy. I’d never thought about it growing up. My dad tried to make some dough but didn’t have the stomach for it. My mom saw her job as a way to give a little back.
She’d spent her life in a red brick elementary school two towns over from ours in the New York suburbs, teaching music to ten-, eleven-, and twelve-year-olds. My parents now lived almost entirely off her pension. In her retirement, she taught piano and swam at the Y. For the last forty-seven years, she’d been cooking my dad’s meals. If, God forbid, she died before him, she’d need to remember to throw a chicken in the oven first, so he wouldn’t starve. I loved her with a confused and heated passion. Once or twice, early in her brief career, I think she sang on Broadway. As a kid, I’d go over to her elementary school to see the shows she staged. I quit going as soon as I got my driver’s license. A bouquet of flowers at the final bow, my mother walking out of the dark, reaching up to take them, then walking back into the dark. In the weeks before the show she’d play those old records, Oklahoma!, Annie Get Your Gun, The Pajama Game, Oliver!, on a wooden phonograph in our living room. I knew those shows by heart, knew where each of those records skipped, and sang the songs accordingly.
She led a fairly dull existence. Her youthful dreams fell away by necessity. Most people don’t have it in them to change the world, don’t harbor some secret fantasy so deeply buried and believed in that it gets confused with what’s real.
Jerry accidentally destroyed the magazine. Marty ruined Hollywood, cable news, and FM radio. The Tennessee toad hoarded the treasures of all antiquity. Amy remembered the neediest, but she also owned a private jet and a live-in gardener, and caved to the whimsy of her redneck fascist owner.
To all the world, she was the lucky one. But I knew the truth, and kept it a secret, this thing that she herself could not keep secret, couldn’t contain. She’d saddled me with it, infected me, inserted this sadness into me so that I went around burdened with it, tied to her. Now I’d be required to carry these valuables down the street to the post office, to mail them back to her, certified mail, heavily insured. Who would repay me? She could’ve made a real difference in my life, could’ve changed it forever with a flick of her pen. But instead, she left me here to rot.
I added up everything I’d ever given her: Christmas sweater, accidental bracelet, blouse, necklace, in addition to the dinner I’d bought her here last summer, bouillabaisse, braised vegetables, plus the gas I’d used driving up and down the East Coast so I could detour to Connecticut to hump her in her closet. It came to four grand, or nearly 7 percent of last year’s income. Whereas 7 percent of her husband’s income was $8 million. If the stuff she’d sent me—sweater, scarf, Italian leather gloves—added up to $800, then she’d spent less, much less, proportionally speaking. I was a fucking lot more generous.
I watched a video on the History channel with the volume down on the pitfalls of selling stolen goods to pawnshops. They interviewed criminals on what to say, how to act. I’d end up in jail or worse. I took notes.
Vast marshes of cattails looked beleaguered in the rain. At the end of town I hit the highway with a hysterical sense of self-justification, guilt level holding steady, howling inner voices mostly suppressed. Looking back in my rearview mirror, I lost sight of town, and broke the spell of the conference.
Thirty minutes later, I exited the highway and entered a quiet, stiff, old-fashioned, intolerant picture-postcard seacoast village, with a monument to dead soldiers of World War I, strolling tourists, and geese floating in the pond. I missed the weirdness of my temporary home, the dildo stores and street buskers, the drag queens scaring children.
The jewelry store was located inside the lobby of an old hotel. A woman seated under a bright light in the corner raised her head. A man in a suit came out of an office. Above us I noted closed-circuit cameras. It felt as though someone had taken the blunt end of a broomstick and banged it into my guts. We, my family, had decided to liquidate some heirlooms, I said. You gave them something airtight and unassailable and kept it short and sweet. He led me into his office and clasped his hands over a thick white pad covered in gem diagrams. He began listing his bona fides—licensed, certified—then talked about precision and magnification. “You can trust me,” he said, “because I trust myself.” I didn’t know what I’d been hoping for, but this was not going to work. I explained that we kept everything in a safe-deposit box in Rhode Island but I could come back as soon as my Aunt Bunny gave her consent. He nodded, ignoring me, then pointed to Mrs. Nelson, sitting behind the case, who happened to be even more highly certified than him, he said. “But we can’t advertise her certification without an AGS-approved lab.”
It got worse. Historically, the trade in gemstones has been somewhat secretive, he explained, resistant to any kind of auditing or regulation. New developments had raised the reputation of the industry, helped standardize appraisal methods. This guy was some kind of fucking moralizing gemologist.
“What percentage of jewelers are licensed?”
“Oh, most.”
On the shelf behind him were family photos, including one of him in a burgundy fez. He said something about an old lady who came by with a six-carat diamond. “I’ve been here for thirty-one years,” he said. “I’ve been named personally in people’s wills.” He’d done thousands of transactions. We made an appointment for next week, and I stood and thanked him, feigning relief at having found an honorable soul, and gave him my name, Dennis Fleigel. I assumed I’d be arrested as I stepped out of the hotel, handcuffed, maybe stabbed, waiting hungrily for the blade to part my flesh.
I’d made a list of places to try within a hundred miles, and drove to the next one on it. The woman behind the counter needed proof of my ID, and sent me to the copier place two doors down. I got back in the car. Other places were too crowded or had gone out of business or had a bad vibe. One guy mostly worked with cuckoo clocks, beneath strips of peeling wallpaper.
Twenty miles down the highway I reached a fusty resort town on the state line, the last place on the list. A single storefront window displayed fine jewelry. I had to be buzzed in. I didn’t give a shit anymore what happened.
“What if I have something to sell?”
He wore an orange golf shirt and held a newspaper, folded in thirds.
“What if I found it?”
He looked bored. “Am I the lost and found?”