Kindle County: Pleading Guilty Part 15

'A prover.' A witness - someone who could testify, if need be, in court. 'This lawyer I want to see is supposed to be a little slippery.'

Brushy wagged a finger and let forth in a self-mocking singsong, 'Don't be forgetting who's your girl now, Malloy.'

'Brush, you flatter me.'

'Mmm-hmm,' she answered. I was not sure whether Brushy was feeling wise to the ways of humans in general or just me, but somehow we'd blown past airy humor; her expression was wizened by mistrust. This mood of few illusions reverberated between us, with its bluesy wave forms, and I felt a momentary commission to get to the point.

'Think you're ready to be a one-man woman, Brush?' It was as close as I could come to mentioning Krzysinski.

'I've always gone one at a time, Mack. It's just now and then the time's been short.' She smiled a bit, but I realized intuitively that she meant it. Every one-night stand was a piece of Cinderella inside her head, a part of her always hoping that this slipper was going to fit. People's fantasies, even when they're morbid or trite, are somehow touching; it's the vulnerability, I suppose, the fact that lives, like cardboard cartons, fold so reliably along certain lines.

'You know,' I said, 'if the gals break my heart again, I don't think anyone'll find the pieces.'

'Malloy, give me some credit, okay? I know you. I get it.' She looked to the door to be certain it was closed, then walked to the desk and removed her hat before she gave me a smooch. I was still not ready to be soothed.

'How old are you now, Brush?'

'Thirty-eight,' she said, then thought twice of it and looked at me fiercely. Jesus, this gal could be tough. She asked what difference that made, as if she didn't know. The riff of the independent person is, I don't need n.o.body. I used to hear the same thing from certain old coppers. But G.o.d never made a soul for whom that was completely true. I sort of felt sorry for Brushy. She didn't really take me as the hottest thing on the market and she couldn't misapprehend my reliability or my nature. She just thought I was the best she could get or, maybe, that she deserved. But we both knew I had certain virtues. I'd do what she told me; I needed her guidance. She was smarter than me. And she thrilled me through and through.

I was just thinking about you,' I said. 'Thinking what?'

'How it is,' I answered. 'You know. The bright fires of youth burning down. A body gets lonely.' 'Very literary.'

'The Irish.' I touched the inside of my wrist. 'Verse is in the blood.' 'You have a dislikable side, Mack.' 'So I've been told.'

'It doesn't give you the right to hold someone in contempt, just because you get their number. You're not such a mystery yourself, you know.'

I see.'

'You're a miserable wretch, in case you think anybody else hasn't noticed.'

I told her to ease up and got to my feet. I took her firmly by her full shoulders and gripped her to my chest, where she willingly lingered, a foot shorter.

'Lunch?' she asked.

'Recruiters,' I said.

She groaned sympathetically at the prospect of committee work. 'Tonight?' I asked.

'It's my parents' anniversary.' She brightened. 'You could come. Warm Italian family.' 'Uh-oh.'

I suppose you're right.' We looked at each other. 'Tuesday,' I said. 'Toots.'

'Toots.' From the door, she cast a gloomy eye as I stood by my desk. Maybe there is never really a chance to fully combine after adolescence. Maybe all those tribal types, the Indians and the Hebrews, had it right, marrying everyone off by the age of thirteen. After that it's. .h.i.t-or-miss, the spirit singing out but forced to surmount the channels, the borders dug deep of what has become recognized, if not cherished, as the self.

'Open or closed?' she asked from the door.

I flicked my hand.

'I'm here,' I told her, 'either way.'

B. Checking My Points In a bow to democracy and to help with the work, the Committee over the years has created more subcommittees than either House of Congress, each one empowered with dominance over some minor region of law firm life. We have subs on ethical questions, on staff employment, on computer usage, pro bono work, and paper recycling. In this regime, recruiting is regarded as a mixed bag. It wields genuine authority, hiring both summer clerks and the first-year lawyers who join G & G every fall following the bar exams, but the workload is substantial and can never be fully managed in the rush of the week. By longstanding agreement, we meet when we have to for Sat.u.r.day lunch. At this time of year, when our activities lull, it's only once a month, and after reviewing a final list of summer hirings and calendared interviews for next fall, the five of us - Stephanie Plotzky, Henry Sommers, Madge Dorf, Blake Whitson, me - fell, as we generally do, into gossip.

'So what do you hear?' asked Stephanie. 'I saw Martin this morning. He just said, "Bloodier than ever." He looked beat and it was nine o'clock.' We were two blocks down from the Needle at Max Heimer's, a deli characterized by second-rate food and Third World hygiene. Stephanie had ventured this goody, leaning over the table, her round face, highly made up even on Sat.u.r.day, close to the container of pickles, whose side was spattered with grime.

'The corporate guys are getting hit,' said Henry. 'The eighties are over.' He was a bankruptcy lawyer himself, on boom times. Madge, a deal person, didn't really agree, and we debated a little among ourselves, as if it made any difference.

The Committee members were over at Club Belvedere today, in one of the elegant conference rooms, licking their pencils and pa.s.sing out points. Groundhog Day was Thursday. My partners reacted with the same anxieties all the good boys in grade school exhibited on Marking Day, when the nuns sent us home so they could fill in our report cards. I never worried. I knew what was coming - A's and boxes of corrective checkmarks in the sections reserved for deportment.

But I was not as sure where I was headed this year at the firm. I thought my deal with the Committee when I agreed to go looking for Bert was no more pay cuts, but n.o.body'd actually said that. My four partners on Recruiting were up-and-comers and it was clear that Pagnucci had given each one the treatment - some soothing, some encouragement. They were all going to make more money next year. As for me, I could tell from the sidelong glances that each of them sensed, supposedly privately, that my share was going to be reduced again. It was never ax murder. Just a 5 percent cut every year. Still, I walked back to the building after lunch alone and brooding.

All right, I admit it - these decreases each year hurt my feelings. Money's the big scorecard in this kind of life; there's no winning percentage, no runs batted in. It's always struck me as meaningful how we refer to the percentage of firm income we each are awarded as 'points.' Your partners tell you each year what they think you are worth.

By now I can live without everything the marginal dollar buys, except self-esteem.

I sat in my office. The cold winter sun could be seen through the screen of clouds; its light played on the river, tossing Christmas spangles across the greenish reflections of the big buildings on the banks. I tried to set aside my feelings of deprivation to think about Bert, but I got nowhere with that. How much? I kept thinking. How much were they taking away this year? What an effing load of nerve. I'm running from coppers and they're cutting my pay. I kept this up until I was seething. I was in one of my states, angry and mean, Bess Malloy's boy reeling from what he was missing. I drifted upstairs, not really telling myself where I was going, then looked both ways down the book-lined hall and slipped into Martin's office, figuring he'd have retained a draft of the proposed point scheme somewhere in his drawer where I'd peeked at it three years before. I wasn't worried at that moment about being caught. Let somebody catch me. f.u.c.king let them. I had a few things to say. Eighteen years, for Chrissake. And they're paying Pagnucci on my back.

The most important papers in Martin's office were locked in his credenza behind the thousand-year oak. I'd seen him open the drawer a hundred times before, lifting the rubber belly on his hula dancer clock to reveal the battery and the little gold key. I had the usual drilling sense of isolation when I was alone in the firm and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around. The big corner office with its reliquary of goofball objects - the paintings, the sculptures, the weird furniture - was dim and I hesitated to turn on the light. What the h.e.l.l would I accomplish? I wondered. Would I s.h.i.t in the drawer, like some bada.s.s burglar expressing himself? Could I complain? I might. There were a lot of people around here who lay on the floor and moaned as GH Day approached, or went office to office sniping. It didn't matter, though, really. I was being bad. I felt just like a kid, but I'd felt like that before and there was some peculiar purification in acting on impulse.

Martin's private drawer is a mess. I was shocked to discover that the last time I did this. I would have expected exacting order. Martin is one of those persons, so large and voluble, so much a presence, that it is always disquieting to realize how much of his soul he conceals. I suppose Martin did the filing himself, given the utter sensitivity of the doc.u.ments, and chaos reigned without a secretary's a.s.sistance. There were hanging folders in the drawer but many of the papers had been slopped un-stacked on the unfinished slats of the bottom. A lot of the most intimate secrets of the firm were in here. Letters from a shrink saying that one of our first-years would slit his throat if we fired him. (We hadn't.) Financial projections for the end of the year, which looked pretty bad. There was also a file with written evaluations of the performance of each partner. I was tempted to read through the disdainful comments about me, but decided to pa.s.s on the chance for more self-laceration. Finally I found a folder marked 'Points.'

Inside was a photocopy of an early draft, handwritten by Carl Pagnucci, of this year's point distribution plan. I didn't look at it closely, because in the same file I found a memo. It had been folded in four, but the handwritten initialing at the top could not be mistaken. J.A.K.E. John Andrew Kenneth Eiger. Jake loved his initials. They were on everything, his shirt cuff, his beer mugs, his golf bag. Like anything else in his hand, I could imitate the initials so well that I didn't even need a subscript to show I was signing with his authority, but n.o.body else around here was quite as skillful. I had no doubt this was authentic.

pleading guilty privileged and confidential 18 November TO: Robert Kamin, Gage & Griswell FROM: John A. K. Eiger, General Counsel, TransNational Air RE: First Wave 397 Settlements I wanted to advise you of a flap concerning the 397 settlement payments which arose while you were trying the Grainger claim. As usual, the plaintiffs' lawyers are fighting with each other about litigation expenses. It seems that Peter Neucriss engaged a firm in Cambridge, Ma.s.s., called Litiplex for litigation support -apparently they provided crash reconstruction, computer modeling, consulting engineers, expert testimony, a.n.a.lysis of the NTSB proceedings, and records management. Litiplex has a series of invoices outstanding totaling about $5.6 million. Neucriss says he hired them with the consent of all lead counsel for the cla.s.s and says I agreed at the time of the settlement that Litiplex would be paid from the 397 fund. The cla.s.s lawyers say there was no such agreement - not too surprising, since paying Litiplex off the top, as Neucriss is demanding, will reduce the cla.s.s lawyers' fee by about half a million dollars. Both sides are threatening to take up the issue with Judge Bromwich. I am very much afraid that Bromwich will ask for an accounting, which will lead to discovery of the fund surplus. Rather than take that risk, and accepting that I may have made a commitment to Neucriss, I'll authorize payment of Litiplex's invoices as a below-the-line charge against the surplus. Please deliver the following checks to me.

Attached was a listing of Litiplex invoice numbers and the amounts supposedly due.

I no longer had to look for what Bert had transmitted to Glyndora. 'Per the attached, re agreement with Peter Neucriss ...' This, clearly, was it. But I read the memo three or four more times as I sat there in Martin's empty office, feeling as if somebody had put a cold hand on my heart. I kept asking myself the same thing, the voice within speaking in the forlorn tones of a child. What was I going to do now?

XX. MEMBERS OE THE CLUB.

The Club Belvedere is Kindle County's oldest social club, erected in the Gilded Age. Here the true elite of the county, men of commerce and standing, have dined and played squash with each other for more than a century. Not your usual grubby politicians whose power is transient and, worse yet, borrowed, but people with fortunes, the owners of banks and industrial concerns, families whose names you see on old buildings, who will still be prominent here in three generations and whose children are apt to marry one another. These are folks who, generally speaking, like the world as it is, and virtually every achievement in social progress which I can recall has involved a celebrated fracas among the club membership, some of whom have inalterably opposed the admission of first Catholics, then Jews, blacks, women, and even a single Armenian. You would think that a sensible human would find this atmosphere repulsive, but the cachet the Belvedere confers seems to overwhelm almost every scruple, and Martin Gold, for instance, in relaxed conversation spoke of nothing but 'the club' for a solid month - how good the food was, how handsome the locker rooms - when he was elected to membership over a decade ago.

The club is an eight-story structure in Revival style that occupies half a block in Center City, not far from the Needle. I dashed over there, Jake's memo in my pocket, and swept in past the doorman. The facility is splendid. The entire first floor is paneled in American walnut, handsomely burnished to a deep tone which seems to embed the glow of low lights and reminds me inevitably of the brownskinned men who chopped these trees, and their descendants in livery who've kept the wood polished to a sheen like somebody's shoes. An imposing dual staircase of white marble rises at the far end of the lobby, adorned with the club crest and winged cherubs, emblems of the period when Americans felt their surviving republic was destined again to achieve the greatness of Greece.

Naturally, I was not even in the lobby long enough to check my topcoat when here, G.o.dd.a.m.n it, was Wash. He was carrying, of all things, a golf club, a wood, gripping it like a dead goose by the neck, right below its l.u.s.trous persimmon head. I could not imagine what he was doing. It was in the twenties outside and the ground was frozen hard. He was equally surprised to see me, and met my appearance with a member's vaguely scornful air for a known outsider. He was wearing a smashing houndstooth sport jacket, checks of black and autumnal gold, and gleaming ta.s.seled loafers. Squashed down below the neck of his open b.u.t.ton-down shirt so that it was partly concealed, as if even Wash recognized that this was a ludicrous affectation, an ascot peeked out, spotted with itsy-bitsy paisleys. I had no idea what I was going to say when he greeted me, but I was saved by instinct.

'Meeting over?' I asked. Wash is far too cowardly to want to discuss with me the Committee's decisions about points, especially mine. That job fell every year to Martin, who, after the formalities of Groundhog Day, would honor me by a visit to my office and clap me on the back, creating the impression that he, at least, maintained firm opinions about my value. Instead, Wash's face weakened at once into a sappy ingratiating expression. Up close you can see a certain studied nature to Wash's amiable mannerisms. Pressed, he has no instincts of his own. He is a collection of everybody else's gestures, the ones he sees as appealing, winning, sure not to offend.

'Not quite,' he answered. 'Martin and Carl needed a break for the phone. We'll resume at four. Thought I'd take the opportunity to clear my head.' Wash hefted the golf club; only the fear that I might actually detain him kept me from saying that I was glad to finally know what it was for. Wash, meanwhile, escaped gladly from my company and headed for the gilded doors of the elevators.

I did not leave the lobby. With my topcoat checked, I took a straight-backed chair in a small paneled alcove near the cloakroom and the telephones. I still didn't know what I was doing here. I had rushed over to confront Martin, but now I was moving as if my weight had tripled, and thinking at the same pace. What would that exercise accomplish? Plan, I told myself, think. Beneath my hand, my knee, to my considerable surprise, had started to tremble.

A few years ago Martin's pal Buck Buchan, who was running First Kindle, got in Dutch in the S & L crunch and Buck made a few calls so that Martin was hired as special counsel to the board. Buck and Martin go back to a time when the mind of man runneth not to the contrary, Korea and the U when they were both trying to get in the girdles of the same sorority girls. There's a picture someplace of both of them in white socks and bow ties. I was with Martin the morning he had to go tell Buck they were taking his job. It was the end of the line for Buck, the conclusion of an upper-cla.s.s life of achievement, a daily existence of hopping along the highwire, with the eyes of the world upon him and his body full of the erotic pleasure of power. The tent was coming down for Buck; he would have to tend his wounded soul in the festering dark of scandal and shame. Buck had dropped the ball and Martin was going to tell him, eye to eye, man to man, and remind Buck of what he undoubtedly always knew, that for all the hours he and Martin had spent together matching lively minds and senses of destiny, no one could expect Martin Gold to take a dive, to abandon the n.o.ble traditions of his professional life. Martin went off to this meeting with a graven face, shadowed and grieved. Everybody here admired his grit - and so did the board at First Kindle, which has hired Martin since then with increasing frequency. But how good are all those principles when you and your law firm come out on the short end of the stick? The answer - the memo Martin had stashed - was folded in my shirt pocket.

I should have known better of course than to go after Wash. He's a weak person, never any help at all in a crisis. But when push came to shove, I wasn't ready to take on Martin - I lived with my father until I was twenty-seven and never once told him that I knew he was a thief. Nor did I want to confront Pagnucci's icy calculations. That would require more forethought and surer resolve. Instead, I went to an attendant, the kind of good-looking retainer you expect in this sort of place, a guy in a navy blazer and white gloves, retired military probably, and asked if he had any idea where Mr Thale could have gone with a golf club.

He directed me to the second sub-bas.e.m.e.nt, a cavernous service area that had probably doubled as a fieldhouse decades ago, before a st.u.r.dy running track had been put down under a dome on the roof. Now a flooring of green plastic turf had been laid over the concrete and a line of folks stood whacking golf b.a.l.l.s. Many of these people were in sweats. Down this low, it was chilly, maybe 65 degrees. The green rug of the tee area extended twenty feet or so to a curtain of netting that was suspended from the ceiling and draped in layers like a veil. Beyond was a region of complete blackness, darker than doom. Somewhere out there must have been some kind of wiring, because mounted from the concrete abutments, directly over each golfer, was what looked like a green electric scoreboard. I watched as the guy nearest me hit and then studied the screen overhead, where a progression of white dots appeared, meant, I eventually realized, to show the predicted flight of the ball. After the last dot lit up, a digital readout popped up, announcing the supposed distance of the shot.

I finally spotted Wash down the line, flailing away. He had a bucket of b.a.l.l.s and had laid his fine jacket out neatly behind it. He swung awkwardly. He'd probably been playing his whole life, without ever quite getting the game.

Seeing me approach, Wash's look hardened. I knew at once he thought I'd come to beseech him about my points and he was already drawing himself up to a high-minded stance in which he could remind me, with his usual perfect cordiality with underlings, that I was way out of line. Instead, to disarm him, I took the memo from my pocket and watched him unfold it. He read it standing on the driving mat. His eyes had a sort of hyperthyroid extension from his face anyway and they were quick, with little throbbing veins jumping about. The air around us raced with the steady rhythmic click of b.a.l.l.s struck and rising. When Wash finished, he looked utterly uncomprehending.

'It's Jake,' I said.

He recoiled somewhat. He checked over his shoulder on the other golfers, then pushed me back toward the steel door I'd come through to enter this area, where the light trailed off and the full subterranean dark began to reach toward you, along with the spooky underground sounds of the building.

'You're making a.s.sumptions,' Wash said. 'Tell me where this came from.'

I told him. I didn't know how to explain and I didn't. But even Wash recognized that my bona fides were a side issue. It was obvious from the results that I had good reason to search.

'The memo's a phony, Wash. There's no Litiplex, remember? There are no records at TN. Jake faked this. Maybe Bert's in on it too. There are a million questions. But it's Jake for sure.'

Wash scowled again and took a gander over his shoulder. His look was reproving, but he was too well brought up to tell me to keep my voice down.

I say again you're making a.s.sumptions.'

'Like h.e.l.l. You explain this.'

The whole notion of a challenge clearly vexed him. I was putting him on the spot. Then I saw Wash's pale, soft face become firm as he fixed on an idea.

'Perhaps it's Neucriss,' said Wash. 'Some game of his. Maybe he made all this up.' Peter, G.o.d knows, was capable of anything. But I had realized still sitting in Martin's office why he had contacted Peter. Martin had the memo. He wanted to know what was going on. He wanted to know if the doc.u.ment was real or a fraud, if Neucriss, by some improbable circ.u.mstance, could explain. But it wasn't Neucriss jacking us around. It was Jake.

'Sure,' I said to Wash, 'sure. So we get Jake in Martin's office and tell him there's no Litiplex, and does Jake say, "Oh my G.o.d, Neucriss told me there was"? h.e.l.l no. He acts like this whole thing's a shock to him. "How dare Bert," he says. "And by the way, if you don't find him, let's never hear about this again." This only adds one way. Jake wrote this frigging memo to Bert. Bert gave him the money. And Jake's got it now. He's covering himself, Wash. And Martin's helping him.'

'Don't be absurd,' he said immediately. He was reacting to the idea of Martin as corrupt. His mouth worked around, as if he could actually absorb the bad taste.

'Absurd? You think about this, Wash. Who was it who said he'd called the bank down in Pico? Who told you that the General Manager, whatever his name is, Smoky, that he indicated between the lines it was Bert's account? Who'd you hear that b.s. from?'

Wash is a good deal shorter than me, and my height seemed at the moment, as it is now and then, an odd advantage, as if I was out of reach of refutation.

'Think about Martin's performance the other day,' I said, 'dragging Jake in and spilling the beans after you and Carl had decided otherwise. What did you make of that?'

'I was put out,' Wash said. I told Martin so afterwards. But that's hardly the sign of some dark conspiracy, that he felt he had to speak up.'

'Come on, Wash. You want to know why Martin whistled Jake in? He wanted Jake to know. He wanted it, Wash. He wanted Jake to know that Martin had the goods on him and was keeping his mouth shut.'

A certain blankness set in as Wash pondered all of this. He was very slow.

'You're putting this the wrong way. I'm sure Martin found this doc.u.ment somehow and realized, I suppose, that for the time being it was best not coming to light. You're making it sound sinister.'

'It is sinister, Wash.'

He frowned and torqued away. He took one more look in the direction of the other golfers. I could see that my brusqueness and bad manners had finally stimulated Wash to a sense of offense.

'Look, man', he said, using that term, 'man,' in an old-fashioned high-born way, 'he was following the logical imperatives here. Don't be so quick to scorn. Or condemn. Think this through. This firm cannot go on without Jake. Not in the short run. Tell me, Mack, you're such a clever fellow - tell me. If you run and do something half-c.o.c.ked, you tell me what your plans are.' His aged light eyes, pocketed by all that used flesh, glimmered with rare directness. The plans he was asking me to specify were not an investigative scheme. He meant what plans did I have to make a living without Jake. I actually took an instant to let the little logical steps descend. n.o.body was going to reward my virtue if I put a knife in Jake's heart. I knew that. I'd been hugging his hind end for years with that realization. Nothing had changed really. It's just that the cost would be a little bit higher, in terms of my own self-respect.

'So that's it? I'm supposed to say dandy? That's Martin's answer. Let Jake steal. Just so long as he sends business. "Hey, Jake, you know that I know. So cut the c.r.a.p with the firm in Columbus. Let's resume the gold rush." Come on, Wash. This is making me sick.'

There was a sudden thunderous rumble above and we both jolted. One of the golfers had bounced a shot off the heating ducts on the ceiling. They were padded in foam but still let forth a tremendous sound on impact. The instant of brief fright seemed to prompt Wash to an effort at candor.

'Look, Mack, I can't read Gold's mind. Obviously he prefers to keep his plan, whatever it is, to himself. But you've known this man for years. Years. Are you telling me you can't trust Martin Gold?' Wash and I, in this bas.e.m.e.nt, snapping in whispers, posed close as lovers, both stood struck by that question. Wash was doing what he always did - what he did the other day when the Committee talked over Jake's proposal that we stay silent if Bert didn't return. Wash was posturing, shooting airb.a.l.l.s, taking the easy way out. He knew just what was happening. Not every detail; neither did I. I still found it impossible to calculate how Bert fit in, how Martin had been able to blame him confident that he would not reappear. But Wash nevertheless had the lowdown on this scene: it was grubby and evil. He knew that instinctively because it was exactly what Wash, with no reflection, would have done -swap Jake the money for the survival of the firm. And he was keeping himself from speaking that sooty truth by pretending that Martin might have been up to something better.

'You're a fool, Wash,' I said suddenly. In the midst of everything else, the seething emotions, the bas.e.m.e.nt gloom, I walked away feeling great. Pure primitive pleasure. I had needed to say that for years.

I had wrested the memo from Wash without resistance. I folded it into quarters again and jammed it in my pocket as I strode up the gray steel stairs that had led me down. It was all clear now. By the time I was back up in the grand surroundings, amid the wooden walls and the cut-crystal sconces, I felt motivated and strong, mean and myself. I was done being little boy disappointed. I was man among men. When I forged through the revolving doors to the winter street, I was starting to plan.

Sunday, January 29 XXI.

THE INVESTIGATION BECOMES AN INTERNATIONAL AFEAIR.

A. International Plight The TN Executive Travelers Lounge, where I waited for Lena Sunday morning, afforded a rare vantage on a world askew. The place looked terrific. The interior designer produced the kind of tasteful s.p.a.ce-age effect I'd have strived for in my office if I ever decorated, lots of curved woods and big windows, sleek leather chairs and granite end tables upon which were perched those special telephones operated by credit cards with two or three jacks for your portable modem and fax. The elegant-looking ladies guarding the door examined the entrants, who, every one of them, flashed their membership cards with the same air, Hey, look at me, I'm in the front of the boat, I really made it. Nipponese businessmen flying for thirty hours dozed on the fancy furniture; well-turned-out executives cracked away at their laptops; wealthy couples conferred, one of them always looking anxious with the prospect of flight. A waiter in a white jacket wandered around with a tray to see if anybody wanted a drink, while voices from the Sunday-morning TV news shows emerged from the bar.

Here met is the Flying Cla.s.s, a group ever expanding, whose real workday is spent in the sky, whose true office is an aisle seat on a DC-10, folks who have so many million award miles they could fly to Jupiter free. These are the orphans of capital, the men and women who have given up their lives for the corporate version of manifest destiny, who are trying to fling far some company's empire in the name of economies of scale. I had an Uncle Michael who was a traveling salesman, a sad sack with an ugly brown valise, one of those lacquered boxes that seemed welded to his hand. His was regarded as the fate of a misfit. Now it's a badge of status to be away from home four nights a week. But on G.o.d's green planet is there anything more depressing than an empty hotel room at ten at night and the thought that work, privilege, economic need not only claim the daylight hours but have, however briefly, ent.i.tled you to these awesome lonesome instants in which you're remote from the people and the things, tiny, loved, and familiar, that sustain a life?

Listen to me. What was I missing but my easy chair and the TV set and bloviating moments interacting with Lyle? And I'd have Lena's youthful company. My briefcase and travel bag were between my knees. I'd packed light - underwear, a suit to do business, swimming trunks, and a few items I'd need: my pa.s.sport, my Dictaphone, some TransNational Air stationery from the office, an old letter signed by Jake Eiger, and three copies of TN's annual report. Plus the memo I'd found in Martin's drawer, which was never going to leave my sight. Like Kam, I'd also taken a $2500 cash advance on my new golden credit card, which had been messengered to the office on Friday. I had been up most of the night scheming and I shut my eyes, imagining the wind on Pico, fragrant with sea salt and tanning oil as it rattled the palms.

'Yoo-hoo.' The voice was sweetly familiar, but I still jumped a little when I opened my eyes. 'Brushy Bruccia, as I live and die.' 'So,' she said, seeming perky and young. She looked happy and pleased with herself. Her bag was slung over her shoulder and she carried her coat. She wore jeans.

'Where you going?' I asked.

'With you.'

'Really and truly? What happened to Lena?' 'Emergency a.s.signment. She'll be in the library all night.'

I got it then. I told Brushy I didn't need to ask from who.

'That girl has a lean and hungry look.'

'She's got a look,' I said, 'I'll give you that.'

Brushy punched me solidly in the arm, but I was too embarra.s.sed to carry on in front of all these men. We walked over to the leather chairs. Neither of us said anything.

'You're supposed to be pleased,' she told me eventually.

'How could I not be?' I was feeling impinged upon. I had my plans for Pico, which depended on a traveling companion who was more credulous than Brushy.

'Let's try this again.'

She walked away and came around a handsome rosewood divider that sported CRTs listing arriving and departing flights.

'Mack! Guess where I'm going.'

'With me, I hope.'

'Now you've got it.'

I told her she was odd.