A Bridge to Treachery From Extortion to Terror (3 page)

“He probably won’t even get to it at this rate.”

“How about a cup of coffee? They still sell it downstairs?”

“I’d like a cup,” she said.

“Don’t buy the wingback while I’m gone.”

In the basement he found a couple of women selling coffee and Coke for the benefit of
Meals on Wheels
. There was a line of about five people ahead of him. The shuffling of feet on the floor above blended into the hissing chat in the basement. The auctions were now a constant in their life, and they clung to them as a link to their early days together, when they needed to work at acquiring the accouterments of a household in a way that was as far as possible from thrift shops or lawn sales. They could always give the impression of being hot on the trail of a good Sheraton drop leaf table. Yes, auctions filled their evenings in a way far better than small talk, television, or stale sex could. It had come that far.

“Here, don’t let it get away from you, Mag. It’s hot. Did I miss anything?”

“The wingback went for a hundred and ninety.”

“Is that good?”

“I’ve seen cheaper.”

Peters grunted and held the cheesy window fan over his head. It was a GE, three-speed. “Good as gold,” he said.

“Who’ll start if off at fifteen dollars? Who’ll give me fifteen? You couldn’t buy it at K-Mart for three times that. Fifteen dollars. Who’ll say fifteen?”

A very young guy, his teenage, pregnant wife sitting beside him just two rows up, raised his card and called out, “Three dollars,” not too loudly.

* * *

Lou and Mag’s trouble had started with his peacetime tour of garrison duty in Korea—his first hardship tour, during which Mag and the kids couldn’t be with him. It was back twenty-five years or so, only five years into their marriage, when she was twenty-seven and he was thirty-three. It was because of a clown named Morrison who resembled Fred MacMurray grinning his ass off all the way through
Flubber
. If she hadn’t told him about the affair in that long, sorrowful letter, it probably would’ve been better all the way around.

He had taken some leave and flown back home. They had talked it to death, concluding that it hadn’t been planned, it had just transpired—as in the “shit happens” school of human relations. It would never happen again and they each would always be an open book to the other, which was a piece of cake for her and hell for him.

She had fundamentally changed in his eyes and seemed to wear guilt like mittens in August, while he carried moral superiority like an ice cube in his mouth. To him, this unfaithfulness of hers had no roots in anything that he had or had not done. In his mind, he had always been scrupulously without fault. The affair just confirmed what he’d always known about human nature and set the invisible cassock he wore even firmer round his shoulders.

That was before his own tumble.

* * *

“Ten dollars. “Who’ll bid me ten and go?”

A skinny man in a hunter’s hat, leaning against the side wall yelled, “Five dollars!” Peters, with the gavel, ignored him.

“Who’ll bid me seven? Seven. Seven dollars. Who’ll bid me seven dollars?”

“Six!” said the kid.

“Six? You can’t buy a block of ice for six bucks. Six?” The young guy nodded and Peters sneered.

* * *

In Maggie’s mind, it had been cold, calculated retaliation, and in Lou’s, spontaneous combustion. Lou had been banging away as usual at his office, trying to make the draw. He asked Suzy, the secretary he shared with two other guys, to stay late and help him get out a mailing—stuffing and addressing envelopes for a lecture he was planning for the next week. He had just made his last call of the night, trying to get old Arthur Hemberger to go for some Connecticut Turnpike revenue bonds. It was about nine o’clock.

He’d assumed Suzy had finished up with the envelopes and taken off because he couldn’t hear any noise behind him. But then there she was, standing right beside his chair, close. As she spoke, she put her hand on his shoulder and then to his neck.

“About finished?” she asked.

“I thought you’d left, Suzy. Yeah, I’m finished.”

As he spoke, he halfway turned in his chair to look behind him at the pile of mail she’d been working on. She didn’t move.

“I’m finished too.” she said.

He was twisted in his chair. She was standing right beside and over him. Reflexively, he had very nearly patted her fanny when he said, “Good girl. I really appreciate that.”

* * *

“I got six. Who’ll give me seven? I got six and who’ll go seven? Seven. Seven. Who’ll give me seven dollars for the fan?”

Against the side wall in the hunter’s hat, the card flashed.

“Seven!” Peters boomed, clapping his hands.

* * *

She was young and lithe and Eurasian. For as long as she’d been in the office, maybe six months, he’d spent more than a few seconds admiring her slim frame and then trudging upstairs to the lunch room to lash himself with birch branches.

“Coffee?” he’d asked.

They spent about forty-five minutes together, counting the time closing the office and in the coffee shop, ordering and then sitting around. For starters, he guided the conversation around to her schooling and favorite subjects. She wanted to know about his family. He quickly changed the subject back to her schooling. She asked about his home town and college. He asked about her boyfriends.

She said she didn’t have any boyfriends, that none of the men her age seemed to know what was going on. He was glad that it was close to ten o’clock.

* * *

“I got seven and who’ll go me eight?”

Again the young guy. And the bid went to eight.

* * *

The parking lot had been nearly deserted. A very light August sprinkle fell like chalk lines in the light from the fluorescent street lamps. He should’ve said, goodnight and let that be the end of it, but he found himself walking her to her car. When she was inside, she rolled down the window and looked up at him. Little drops of rain dotted her chin, and her eyes glistened in the light from the overhead lamp.

“France Nuyen,” he said.

“Who’s he?” she answered.

“I guess you never saw ‘
South Pacific
.’”

“What’s that?” she asked. And then before he could answer, she continued, “Would you like to go somewhere else?”

“Where? What?” was all he could manage.

“To my place,” she said.

Her place was a small, modern apartment in Hackensack. Almost as soon as they were through the door, she was down to her underwear and he was sliding his leg out of his pants. The affair was short and athletic, and Maggie knew about it within two days.

* * *

“And I got eight, who’ll give me nine? I got eight and who’ll say nine? Nine. Nine. Who’ll bid me nine?” Peters said, looking toward the side wall and the hat.

Mag consulted the list of possible acquisitions she’d penciled on the back of the bidding card at the start of the auction, and then scratched them out one by one. Gordon Peters was outdoing himself, wringing the last nickel out of every item. It looked like it was going to be a long night, and Lou was already drumming his fingertips on the seat of his chair.

“I called home while you were downstairs,” she said. “There was a message on the machine from Cal Swisher. He wants you to call tonight.”

“Well, here we go. It’s going to hit the fan this time.”

“Finish your coffee and then call. Maybe he wants to give you a raise.”

“Maybe he wants me to fly to the moon.”

Lou worked his way down the row of bidders, doing his best to avoid toes and handbags stashed on the floor. Down the hall and past the men’s room, he could hear the jukebox and the sound of tinkling ice. The telephone was right outside the bar. He plugged his free ear and listened to the ringing of the phone on the other end of the line.

“Hello, Cal, this is Lou. Somebody leave the office door unlocked again?”

“No, no, nothing like that, Lou. I just wanted to pass a message to you from up the line.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“C’mon Lou, loosen up. I’m on the horn with Patricia Buck this morning, gabbing about all kinds of stuff, and the military pops up out of nowhere, honest to God. And before I know it, she’s asking about you, specifically.

“Me?”

“Yeah, you. That’s what all my questions were about this afternoon. Listen, I have no idea what it’s about. It could mean almost anything. My advice is, go with the flow. Patricia would like to see you in her office tomorrow around nine-thirty. Think you can make it?”

“Do mink stink?” Lou replied.

* * *

He worked his way back to his seat beside Mag.
What the hell can this be?
he wondered. He gazed all around the smoke-filled room and saw Peters droning on. And, for the first time, he saw a man in a dark overcoat and “Indiana Jones” fedora standing at the front of the room. Their eyes met, and the man looked away. Lou kept watching, and then he locked eyes with the man again.

* * *

“Nine dollars. Nine dollars. Anyone for this GE fan? You all through? SOLD to number... thirty-four for eight dollars.”

“I’m glad the kids got it.”

“The kids?”

“The fan. They got the fan. Never mind. Let’s go home. He’ll never get to the butter mold anyway. What did Cal say?”

“Come on,” he said. “I’ll tell you on the way.”

* * *

Lou pushed open the door of the Elks Club and luxuriated in the silence of the parking lot and the night air that pressed against his eyelids. He walked beside Maggie with her fingers clutching his biceps.
Patricia Buck wants to talk infantry
. Across the lot, for just a moment, he thought he saw the “Indiana Jones” fedora again, ducking into a dark, two-door sedan.

In the pit of his stomach, the ulcer induced by the stress of the last four years sent his old friend, pain, careening around the lining as if on a skateboard. He could sometimes dull this aching hollow with sleep; fuzzy logic told him that he could anesthetize it with scotch. When they got home, he tried a tumbler of Dewar’s on top of a hot shower, but at eleven o’clock, he and Maggie still sat upright in bed, talking low.

Chapter Two

“Patty. That’s a cute little name.”

“Not Patty, Mag. Jeez. Not Pat. Just Patricia. Remember the little tap dance I went through when I first met her?”

“Your first interview at Pierson Browne.”

“Right. Still at Fort Dix with three months till discharge and masterfully orchestrating some very serious discussions with Manufacturers Hanover, only the fourth biggest bank around...”

“And you’re masterfully shown the door.”

“Hey! Not before they’d agreed that my vast management experience and demonstrated ability to organize and expedite were just what they needed.”

“What was it again, global something or other?”

“The global custody business. It’s big, Mag, very big.”

“Never mind that you’d never heard of it.”

“Wait a minute. Management is management. The details of the business are incidental.”

“What a crock.”

“Listen, girl. Leadership is a scarce commodity, even on Wall Street. Those were Maggiore’s exact words.”

“Well, you almost had it.”

“I was sure it was in the bag.”

“It was too good to be true.”

“It was three hundred people. Hell, I commanded three thousand.”