8:42 A.M.
I’m riding in the back of The Ship. Dressed to the hilt as usual for my day, forearm redressed, my iPhone to my ear.
“Jonah. Good morning,” Shand says.
“How are you, Greg?”
“I’m well.”
“What’s your schedule like this morning?” I ask.
“A bit jammed, as usual. Why do you ask?”
“I’ve given what you said a lot of thought. I’d like to discuss how we might proceed in person.”
“Well, now, that sounds more than important enough to fit into this morning’s schedule. What time are you thinking of coming by?”
Just as we end our call, my phone rings.
“How are we today, Minnie?”
“Okay, Jonah. I’m ready for it.”
I cringe at the thought of what might next come out of her mouth. But nothing does.
“For . . . what?” I ask, gingerly.
“To sell One Hundred Three Church. I’m ready.”
“This is something you’ve discussed with your whole family?”
“Well, of course it is, Jonah—but who gives a shit about that anyway? The big decisions, as you know, come from me. We may all have to agree on this end, but if I tell this family it’s time to sell then they know better then to fuck with that. So that’s exactly what I’ve done. Told them it’s time to sell. Because you convinced me it’s the right move.”
I stare out the window. Midtown Manhattan silently glides by.
“Jonah? Did you hear me?” she goes on.
“I did, Minnie. I did.”
“So, then, Mister Secrets-And-Shit, do I get to know who I’m selling this cash cow to now?”
“You’ll see the name on the paperwork. Then we can discuss it from there.”
We end our call. I go to M in my contacts, and dial Shawn Magnus, my attorney’s, cell. He doesn’t pick up. It goes straight to voice mail.
“Good morning, Shawn, it’s Jonah. I need a purchase agreement drawn up this morning. And I’m sorry to do this, but I need you to make it your top priority. I need this deal to keep moving ahead at full steam.”
* * *
I follow Shand into the same conference room at Spectrum’s headquarters we spoke in previously.
“Can I have someone bring some coffee? Tea? Water?”
“None for me, thanks,” I say. “I’m fine.”
He closes the door. We each sit in the same seats we sat in during our last conversation.
“So,” I say as his ass hits his chair, “what do you have in mind? You know, about making this Mr. Esparanza situation go away?”
“So, to be clear, you’re saying you’re on board?” Shand answers my question with one of his own.
“I’m saying that in order to really evaluate this option, I just need to be crystal clear on the matter. According to you, there is—possibly—another member of Mr. Esparanza’s crew from that night who forget to mention, when originally questioned about that night, the deceased said he wasn’t feeling well. And that he was going to look for a quiet place to rest for a little bit.”
“Precisely.”
“But what about the way he was found?”
“It becomes less of an important question once this statement comes to the surface, Jonah. But for argument’s sake, he placed his boots neatly next to where he planned on laying down for just a few minutes. After all, he was fully clothed. So why wouldn’t this make sense?”
“Resting on a cold, hard, concrete floor?”
“He was on the verge of a heart attack. It is certainly within the realm of possibility his mind was concerned with more pressing issues than where it was he’d be resting.”
“Uh, huh . . . “ I agree, nodding. “I see where you’re going. But I have some other questions.”
“Such as?”
“Such as—how does this all work with the kids and all? You know—once shit goes down?”
“Kids? What kids? What are you talking about?” Shand asks, clearly confused.
“I’m sorry. Let me be clearer. Once Julie—your wife—finds out you’ve been fucking Madame Martine’s assistant Tiffany, how will that work with the kids? Is she the kind of woman that will entertain an amicable split with everything brushed under the rug for the sake of two young children? Or is she the vindictive type that will go for the jugular? Look to ruin you, and in the process—no matter if these kids are young or not—let them know from day one what a lowlife piece of shit Dad is? I only ask because, well, I’ve seen a number of people go through some pretty wild divorces these last years. Is there any real way to know how these things will go—you know, with kids in the mix and all? I don’t have kids. That’s why I’m asking. I mean—you must have thought about these things, right?”
All the blood having left Shand’s face, he shifts in his seat.
“You’ve—um—you’ve spoken with Tiffany?” is all he comes up with as he clumsily tries to figure out what to do with his hands.
“I have. And while I know she loved that the attention surrounding the missing prototype bottle was being drawn right where she would have hoped—to Marilena—it was the lobby cameras that did her in. While it is clear Tiffany left the building at seven twenty on the night in question, it is equally clear she reentered the property at 7:48 p.m., just twenty-eight minutes after leaving.”
“H-how could that be? Why?”
“How? Simple. She came back in wearing a different jacket, hood up, and sunglasses thinking ‘no problem’ in terms of the main camera she walked past on the way out catching her—I’m guessing at your direction. What you didn’t think about seriously enough, unfortunately—which, surprises me, considering the business you’re in—was the range of the other cameras in the lobby. Another one, all the way across the space, is what picked up the front of her turning away from the camera she was trying to avoid. Once we picked up on this and zoomed in—voila! Now, as for the ‘why’ part of your last question, this is where it gets really interesting. Which we’ll get to.”
“Jonah, please—” Shand says as he starts to stand up.
“Shut up! And sit your ass back down!” I raise my voice, pointing my index finger at his face as if it’s the gun in my waistline.
He does.
“In my house? You want to pull this shit in my house?” I go on. “A house I literally invited you into and have been paying for you to patrol? To clean? To look after?”
I stand up, and start slowly walking around the room.
“Tiffany told me this all came from you. And that you promised her, the same way you promised this young, naïve, vulnerable little girl you’d be leaving your wife for her, that this would all be okay. The plan, according to her, went exactly as you had outlined. She would come back into the building, as she did, she would take the prototype, as she did, and she would meet you on the vacant floor of the building once you were able to make it to the property, which she did. But, unfortunately for you, a few things didn’t exactly go your way.”
I stop, take one of the seats across the conference table from Shand, and sit down again. He swivels and faces me. This time I lean back in my chair and put my feet up. I keep going.
“The other day, when we spoke, I asked if you often visit properties you service the way you did that night. You said no. Then, when I asked if on those unusual nights you do, if you visit more than one property, you said yes. This was easy enough to try and corroborate. I checked the entrance logs for all of my properties. Then I had my detective friend—the one downstairs who’s been assisting on this—ask for the records for that night for all of your other properties outside my portfolio. This was the only building you entered that night. And you did so to meet Tiffany as per her instructions. Only when you did so—you didn’t count on one thing. That Mr. Esparanza would be getting serviced by one of the younger, female, attractive members of that same overnight cleaning crew on the same vacant floor where you and Tiffany were to rendezvous with the stolen goods. Do you know what unfortunately—or, fortunately, depending on who you ask—happened because of this coincidence?”
Shand, downtrodden, beaten, shakes his head “no.”
“It literally scared the life out of Mr. Esparanza. You and I—we’ve been speaking about all the different ways the man could have died; what the—circumstances—could have been surrounding Esparanza’s heart suddenly stopping. What you don’t know is that I—we, meaning my detective friend and me—know exactly what happened. When the deceased and that girl heard those elevator doors open—and he thought about all that would come with his being found in this compromising position—he had his fatal heart attack. Did you mean to do that? No, of course not. And did the man go out while he was literally, to the moment, getting a piece of ass behind his wife’s back? Yes. But that doesn’t change what happened. That man died when he heard the elevator open at the exact time you were apparently meeting Tiffany. The moment actually scared his heart into submission. You can take that little nugget with you.”
I stand up and slowly continue around the table.
“Anyway, the lock,” I continue. “Again, it was the right idea to have the lock to Madame Martine’s office appear to have been manipulated, since Tiffany had the key. But you should have better instructed her on how to do this. She scratched the handle and area around the lock up pretty good, but when the inside of the lock was examined in a forensic manner—one thing was clear as the water in the Galapagos Islands. The inside of the lock was as pristine as the day it was first used, having only ever been opened—or attempted to be opened—by one of the keys that fit inside it. No one tried to get into that door lock. Tiffany, I’m guessing at your direction, just did a shitty job of trying to make it look like someone did. Which brings me, finally, to the why. Do you want to explain this part of it all to me?”
“Jonah, you may think you—”
“Shut up! I wasn’t really asking,” I cut him off. “For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why a guy like you would get involved with crap like this. So we had to do a little digging. It turns out Spectrum, while still doing decently when all the subsidiaries are taken into account, isn’t going quite as strong as it was only three years ago. In fact, your business as a whole is barely breaking even—which makes sense when you take into account all the competition that’s popped up in the space over these last few years with a resurgence in the economy. Then, at the suggestion of Tiffany, we decided to look into someone named Suzanne Ornstein. As an acquaintance of my detective friend was easily able to learn, a large chunk of your personal holdings are in the stock of an American company called GMHO Global—one of the largest corporations in the world. A corporation that has a subsidiary called LivLiv Style Center, which is a women’s fashion, make-up, perfume, and accessory company. A company where your only sister, Suzanne Ornstein—whose maiden name is Suzanne Shand—is a vice president. A company that, like, Spectrum, has seen better days.”
“Jonah, look. If you’ll just let me—”
I crack him across the jaw as I’ve come full circle around the table and reached him. The surprise in his eyes as his hand moves to his cheek makes it clear he realizes it’s time to fully succumb.
“Nothing you have to say is worth shit to me, Gregory, and I have a busy morning. We both know that this—getting this coveted new fragrance—into your hands, once your brainwashed little bang doll made it known it was on its way over from Paris, was a much easier opportunity for getting something back on track than turning around your entire business. But as a typical lowlife like yourself often tends to overlook when it comes to their self-interest, people got hurt. Tiffany got hurt. Madame Martine got hurt. Esparanza got hurt. I got hurt. So now, I have one question. And it’s one I really want you to answer.”
“Okay.”
“Can you get the prototype back?”
“Well, that’s too bad. Because unless you can, my detective friend downstairs is coming upstairs to arrest you for breaking and entering, conspiracy—he’s got a whole laundry list of things you’ll be charged with. And then apparently the two of you will be heading over to your sister’s company for a little chat. So I’ll just—”
I head to the door and put my phone to my ear.
“Wait! Jonah—wait.”
I stop and look at him.
“I can probably get it back.”
“Then I suggest you do so. And when you do—only if you do—this is what’s going to go down. You are going to put out a press release saying that an internal investigation in corroboration with ownership—Resurrection—has resulted in not only sorting out what happened with this missing prototype, you are going to make it explicitly clear it was an inside job within the confines of Spectrum Global. Then, in this same statement, you will make a personal apology to Madame Martine, her firm, myself personally, and my firm. Lastly within this statement, in light of the awful situation that has gone on under your leadership, you will be saying with finality that you will be resigning from Spectrum effective immediately. Am I clear so far?”
Shand nods his head yes.
“Good. After that, you’ll be selling your stake in Spectrum Global to me at a steep—and I mean steep—discount. Since I’m a man always interested in expanding my investment portfolio. I mean, doesn’t it seem like a company like Spectrum would be a great sister company for a firm like Resurrection?”
“Jonah, don’t you think that’s—”
“This isn’t a negotiation. I would think you’d understand that by now.”
Shand opens his mouth to say something. He stops himself.
“Why?” he finally asks.
“Why what?”
“Why not just throw me to the wolves?”
“You know, Gregory, that’s a good question. One I thought about long and hard on the way over here. I’ll tell you why. A woman named Mrs. Esparanza. A woman that—no matter how her husband went out—doesn’t deserve the humiliation that would come with the full story of how these two ridiculous situations were in fact intertwined. I mean—it doesn’t bring him back to life, does it? This woman was proud of her hard-working husband, of their marriage, proud of the life they carved out for themselves. Why should she have to endure that shame with her family, her friends, in her community? She shouldn’t. Any more than a woman named Mrs. Shand should have to. Besides, when it comes to you and your wife? I’m guessing Tiffany might have more to say about that one.”