“I am thinking this will be our last week together,” Mohammed said, pulling on a Marlboro. Lily’s X-acto knife made an unintentional detour through the corner of a twenty, rendering it worthless (well, truly worthless). “It does not pay to get greedy in this business. We have made enough money.”
Lily smiled despite looming disappointment—who would have guessed that counterfeiting was so rich in wordplay?
“I don’t agree.”
“You have made many thousands of dollars in a few months’ time. There are not many professions that pay as well. I have inwested wisely in the securities markets. Now it is time to cash in my chips and send for my family.”
A feeling of dread, laced perhaps with panic, fell over her. True, for the past months she’d been making money faster than she could spend it. She’d rented a series of ever larger safe-deposit boxes at a bank branch on Broadway, to which she repaired twice a week carrying an overnight bag plump with packets of twenties. It had occurred to her that amassing so much fake currency was not a good idea. Mohammed had urged her to “get it into circulation,” as if her cash horde were a lonely widow in need of a social life. She’d given half of her production to Mohammed to invest through his broker, whose firm, she suspected, was called Ask No Questions Financial Services. When she inquired as to the status of her investments, he’d only say, “Doing wery well, wery, wery well.”
Only that morning, emboldened by her revelation the night before, she’d told her mother, who was recounting the horrors of living in tight quarters with “that phony English servant you brought with you,” that they would be moving out soon. Nanny, who must have been “lurking” in the hallway, as Peggy invariably referred to her movements around the apartment, had looked stricken when the three women met a moment later in the tiny foyer. Even if her theory about the missing money was correct, it could be years before she got it back. She’d been counting on her regular production of twenties to tide them over in their own place.
“What will you do?”
“I will continue to drive my taxi until the family comes. Then I will inwest full time while we establish ourselves here. And you, Lily?”
He’d never spoken her name before, and it sounded lovely to her ears, with a gentle glissando on the second syllable.
“I think I’ve figured out who stole the money from my husband’s firm.”
“So you will be rich again.”
“I suppose so.”
He smiled broadly. “Excellent. And will you inwite your husband back into your home?”
“I don’t think so.”
“The candy man?”
“I don’t know.”
He frowned. Having finished the day’s quota of twenties, she turned off the scanner and computer and began to soak the bills in batches of five in the tub of mysterious elixir that Mohammed had earlier prepared.
“You need a plan.”
“Did you always have a plan, Mohammed?”
“I have always had this plan, since I can remember.”
“This is the first time in my life that I don’t have a plan. And it feels okay, which is a bit of a surprise, actually. My entire life has been one long to-do list. Go to college. Marry well. Buy drop-dead gorgeous apartment. Have two children. Get noticed by the right people. Maintain body. It all seems completely pointless now. How is it possible that I could have been completely happy back then but not miss one aspect of my old life today?” She sighed. “Although it would be nice to have my own bathroom again.”
“Perhaps you weren’t as happy as you think you were.”
“No, I was happy. I loved my life. I really did. It was an ideal life in many ways. I just don’t miss it.”
“I have never for a single instant doubted my plan. Doubts are like drops of water from the floor above. Small things, but if you don’t stop them right away, the entire ceiling will come down on top of you.”
“But the other day you said—”
“I said I worried that my sons and my wife had doubts. But not me.”
“Maybe before all this happened I couldn’t admit any doubt or the entire world I’d constructed would collapse on top of me.”
“It is better to keep your focus on your goals than your misgivings.”
“Unless they’re the wrong goals,” she said. “Are we really going to just close this down? I’ll miss it.”
She waited for a reciprocal expression of regret but it never came. Still, she thought she saw a veil of…well, not quite sadness, but perhaps wistfulness, briefly dim his eyes.
As Kristin Liu of Goldman Sachs crossed Guy’s office, he saw her glance at the tank, as visitors always did. But she looked less admiring this time than pitying, as if the fate of the fish, and perhaps Guy’s own lot, were in serious question. It was going to be a difficult meeting. In fact it was going to suck.
Kristin sat on the sofa, Guy in an armchair opposite her. With her long, glossy black hair fanning out across her shoulders like an elaborate headdress, and her groovy eyewear—a tortoiseshell riff on the cardboard glasses once distributed at 3D movies—and her black dress tight as a cowl against her thin body, and her stern, tiny mouth and narrow, impenetrable eyes, she had the aura of a priestess—one who presided over human sacrifices, perhaps. It was going to suck big time.
“It’s about the loan,” Guy preempted her.
“Exactly,” she said, slurring the “ex” into an “ess,” a reassuring flaw. She extracted a sheet of ivory Goldman Sachs letterhead from a burgundy leather portfolio. A death warrant? “Last summer you borrowed two-point-two million dollars against your shares in Positano Software. Those shares have now lost 96.6 percent of their value. As a result, we will need additional collateral to keep from triggering default.”
“How much additional collateral?”
“Ninety-six-point-six percent of two-point-two million dollars is…well, it’s over two million.”
“I think you know that I don’t have anything near that amount.”
“You still have three millions shares of Positano stock.”
Positano had closed the day before at three cents over a buck. One dollar was the dreaded Rubicon for public companies; cross it and you got a delisting notice from the NASDAQ, thereby entering a bleak purgatory of near-dead companies and technology has-beens. Few ever made it out.
“I’d have to put up two-thirds of my shares.”
“Essactly. However, if the price slips below one dollar, we might have to take alternative action.”
“I’m guessing that wouldn’t be good.”
“Our policy is to secure private loans with hard assets when the collateralized share price no longer—”
“Hard assets? We’re a software company. We don’t have inventory or factories. What are you going to do, cart away our desks and computers?” He stole a quick glance at the tank, whose inhabitants floated obliviously through the preternaturally clear, temperature-controlled salt water.
“Guy, this is a very difficult situation for us.”
“My heart is breaking for you.”
“There is an alternative, perhaps. There’s talk on the street about a takeover of Positano by Aquinas.”
“I’ve rejected the offer.” Guy had not spoken to any of the directors since the last board meeting. An ominous silence had fallen over Positano, but he suspected a squadron of frenzied lawyers and bankers was maneuvering behind the scenes to put the Aquinas deal together, with Sumner Freedman, who hadn’t spoken to Guy since the deal was presented to him, as their mole inside the company.
“Would Goldman be interested in putting together a management buyout of Positano?”
“Take the company private? I haven’t studied your numbers lately, your corporate numbers. But my initial reaction is that you’re not a candidate for an LBO.”
“We have a number of contracts out for bid now—six, in fact. If just three of them—”
“There is no way Goldman Sachs will invest in the enterprise software market at this time. No one is looking to enter this market, Guy.”
“Aquinas is.”
“Essactly. But that’s a roll-up.”
As if Positano were an old rug to be shipped off to Goodwill.
“Now, about your personal situation. If the Aquinas takeover comes through, and assuming it’s an all-stock deal, we might be more inclined to accept Aquinas stock as collateral. Assuming they offer a reasonable premium over your current stock price.”
“There won’t be a deal.”
“Then we’ll have to take Positano stock, assuming it holds above one dollar. We generally frown upon collateralized shares below one dollar. There are legal implications for us if they’re delisted.”
Six months ago Goldman had thrown money at him. The two-million-dollar loan for the apartment had been pocket change beneath the bulging wad that was his net worth. Guy still couldn’t believe it had all vanished, or 96.6 percent of it. There hadn’t been one horribly bad day or even one disastrous week for Positano’s stock, just an endless, lurching string of small declines. Where did all that wealth go? Rosemary had asked him recently. It can’t just disappear, can it? Someone must have it, right? She dealt in the world of hard assets, so he found an analogy that worked for her: It’s like dropping an uninsured Tiffany lamp, he’d told her. The value isn’t transferred. It just vanishes.
“So it’s either Positano shares or Aquinas’s?”
“Essactly. You’ll have to work into the merger docs the fact that a portion of your Aquinas shares will be pledged to us. We can help you with the verbiage.”
“I’m sure you can. Are you making a lot of these visits lately?”
“You mean, concerning margin calls?”
“Essactly.”
She smiled uncertainly. “Constantly. It’s not ess—Not really what I went to business school for.”
“And this isn’t what I started a company for, either.”
She slipped the Goldman letterhead back into the leather portfolio and stood up.
“We need to move quickly. Do you know when the merger is being announced?”
“There won’t be a merger.”
Her tiny mouth puckered to a perfect pink anus. And to think he’d once found her attractive.
“It might be your best option.”
“There won’t be a merger.”
“Then we’ll have to collateralize two million shares, assuming they’re—”
“Still over a dollar.” Guy stood up abruptly. “I have a business to run.”
“I understand,” she said.
But he wondered if she really did.
“They’re all forgeries,” Rosemary told Esme Hollender, deliberately avoiding “fake,” which sounded pointlessly harsh. The shades in Esme’s library that she’d raised three days earlier had not been lowered, so the room shimmered in bluish afternoon sunlight, exposing a rime of dust on every surface and a crazing of fine wrinkles on Esme’s cheeks and forehead.
“Which ones?” Esme asked. “You know, I always had my doubts about that lamp I gave you and Lloyd. Ostentatious, I always thought. But everything else is so much more refined.”
“Not just the lamp. Everything. All the art glass, the paintings, even the furniture.” Squinting, Esme glanced slowly around as if confronting a roomful of traitors. If only she hadn’t brought them that lamp, she might have gone on in happy, trusting oblivion. “Your husband had a very bad eye for value, Mrs. Hollender.”
“Bullshit.”
Rosemary made a noise between a gasp and a chuckle. “He bought forgeries, very good forgeries that even an expert—”
“Bullshit. He knew exactly what he was buying. I don’t know why I let him buy all these…these—what do people call them?—these church keys.” She cast angry glances at the tchotchkes adorning the bookshelf across the room, then stood up and walked over to them. “I always thought most of this stuff looked like crap, but he rattled off names of fancy French artists and designers and I thought, Who am I to argue with such knowledge?” She picked up a small atomizer, a Gallé knockoff that, if real, would sell for fifteen thousand dollars or more. “I’ve seen better knickknacks at Woolworth.” She hurled the atomizer against the shelf, shattering it.
“Mrs. Hollender, don’t. Even as forgeries they have some intrinsic value.”
Esme grabbed a ruby-red vase and threw it into the fireplace, where it exploded into a hundred pieces, then picked up a small glass bowl that Rosemary just managed to wrench from her hands before it met a similar fate. Apart from trying to salvage what little value these items might have, Rosemary suspected she’d personally wind up cleaning the room once Esme’s tantrum was over. Thanks to Alden Hollender’s church keys, there was no money left for household help.
“Oh, what shall I do?” Esme wailed.
Esme placed her hands on Rosemary’s shoulders and collapsed into her. She was such a tiny bird that even her full weight felt no more burdensome on Rosemary’s shoulders than a winter coat.
“Mrs. Hollender, come and sit on the sofa. I’ll get you some water.”
But Esme clung to her, whimpering softly. Rosemary sidled across the room, dragging Esme with her, and lowered her onto the sofa.
“Nothing he bought ever looked quite right. Once he brought home a Fabergé egg that had a drop of dried glue on the side. He said Karl Fabergé himself had made it for the Empress of Russia. I remember thinking, Would the czar’s own jeweler neglect to wipe glue off the side of an egg intended for the Empress of Russia? Wouldn’t the Empress have mentioned a drop of dried glue? People were sent to Siberia for lesser offenses back then, you know. Or executed. But I gave him the money he wanted. It seemed easier, somehow.”
“Easier than what?”
“Than admitting the truth,” she said with quiet misery. “That he never loved me. That he was cheating me, cheating on me.”
“Have you been able to recall the name of the dealer he worked with?”
“Of course I remember. He was the other woman.” She smiled primly. “Henry Something. Henry Becton. Or Harold Becton. No, Harold Brighton. No, wait, it was Frederick Brighton. Or maybe not. I don’t have a current address, I’m afraid. Do you think you’ll be able to recover anything from him?”
“I doubt it. Your husband was the buyer, and he probably knew full well what he was getting. If he chose to overpay, that was his prerogative.”
“Oh, dear.”
“You were swindled,” Rosemary said. “Perhaps if your husband invested the money he got from you…”
She shook her head. “He’s been dead ten years. His will left everything to me, and believe me when I tell you, there was nothing.” Esme tottered to the drinks table and poured herself several fingers of Scotch. She lifted the glass to her lips but seemed to change her mind, and returned to the sofa empty-handed. “I might as well tell you, now that we have no secrets…I’m a bit strapped for funds. It’s all I can do to pay the maintenance on this place and buy groceries.”
“I’d figured that out.”
“Well, I did my best not to let on.” Esme cast a brief, longing glance at the drinks table. “I wouldn’t have brought you that lamp, only there’s an assessment on the building this month, something to do with repointing the facade, whatever that means. It’s only for a few thousand dollars, but it was enough to put me in the red. Oh!” She put her hands to her face. “You have no idea how rich I used to be. Filthy, stinking rich. What will my children think?”
No doubt they’ll be bitterly disappointed, Rosemary thought, recalling the phone calls they’d made to Lloyd, urging him to sell as much as possible of what they’d assumed to be a valuable collection, never mind their mother’s apparent reluctance. And Esme would end up taking the blame, Rosemary felt. She’d done nothing worse than trust a scoundrel, but frail old ladies were such easy targets for resentment, they seemed so out of step with life, so irritatingly awkward about things, especially money, and so incapable, for the most part, of fighting back. And they tended to outlive their husbands, often by decades, which could be very inconvenient.
“You can’t keep this place,” Rosemary said. “You can sell it, however, then buy or rent a smaller apartment, and live off the interest on the difference.” Esme didn’t react. “Mrs. Hollender, do you understand what I said? This place is your primary asset now. You need to unlock some of its value to live on.” Thank heavens real estate couldn’t be forged, or she’d be completely destitute. “Real” estate—she understood the term for the first time.
“Are you sure none of it’s genuine?” Esme said, pointing to the bookshelves festooned with worthless glass. “You haven’t looked at every single piece. And some of the furniture…I mean, that’s not your specialty, is it?”
Rosemary shook her head. This was going to be tougher than she’d anticipated.
Lily worked hard to keep at least a half-block’s distance between herself and Nanny. She was a fast, impatient walker and Nanny was on the slow side, her arms swinging as she made her way down Broadway.
At Columbus Circle she went into the subway station. Lily waited until Nanny had paid her fare before swiping her MetroCard, which was always amply filled nowadays, thanks to the machines at every station that didn’t distinguish between real and counterfeit twenty-dollar bills. (Vending machines that accepted twenty-dollar bills were a counterfeiter’s best friend; Lily had a drawer full of loaded MetroCards at home, several lifetimes of prepaid bus and subway travel.) She followed Nanny to the platform of the uptown A train, which thundered into the station a few minutes later, and boarded the car behind the one Nanny chose.
She knew little about Nanny, other than that her real name was Caroline Griffen, that she was born and raised in Essex, England, and had come to New York, after attending some sort of child-care school in England, because she could make twice as much money “minding children” in America as in England. She had worked for a doctor’s family on the East Side, a “prominent cardiologist,” Nanny had insisted on calling him, until his children were too old for a nanny, and then had found the Granthams through an agency. Lily also knew that, since moving out of their Park Avenue apartment, Nanny lived in Washington Heights with her sister, at the northern tip of Manhattan.
Nanny got off at the 181st Street station, Lily close behind. There was something vaguely thrilling about tailing someone, a mixed sense of power and danger. And with Nanny as the target, the feeling was doubly satisfying, since Nanny knew so much about the Granthams, having spent ten years in their home, while Lily knew next to nothing about her. For example, who would have guessed that Nanny had such attractive legs? She’d switched from white shoes with crepe soles to a nice pair of heeled pumps in the lobby of 124 West Sixty-seventh Street and now she looked taller, even graceful, a navy wool coat concealing the drab blouse she wore tucked into a plain gray skirt, her usual attire.
She headed east on 181st Street, then north on Wadsworth Avenue, making slow, unswerving progress along sidewalks teeming with Dominicans returning from work, among whom Nanny looked like a pale visitor from another land—which is what she was, come to think of it. The December evening was unusually warm, the air dry, the fading light casting a sexy, mauvish hue across the blocks of low-rise brick apartment buildings. In front of one such building Nanny stopped to wrap her arms around a tall man, who had apparently been waiting for her. Their faces remained pressed together in a long, passionate kiss. Lily observed them from half a block away
If Nanny’s attractive legs had surprised her, the sight of her children’s beloved baby-sitter soul-kissing a man at least ten years her junior—about thirty-five, perhaps forty, Lily guessed—was downright startling. And wasn’t he…she waited for them to disengage before deciding. Yes, he was definitely the same man who’d tried to steal the envelope from her, the man she’d seen in Queens that day. Lily made a note of the address and headed back to the subway.