Elliot Allagash (6 page)

He leaned in closer and continued in a whisper.

“And it isn’t limited to paintings, Hodges. I own sculptures, prints, photographs, films. I owned a novel once, by a Pulitzer
Prize–winning author. It was profoundly beautiful—one of his best. I made him write it for me in longhand, while under surveillance, to make sure he couldn’t save it electronically. It cost me more money than you would ever dream to guess. He knew he was surrendering all of his rights to me, but I think he assumed I was planning to publish it someday, on some kind of personal press. He didn’t know I planned on destroying it. When he handed me the manuscript and I told him what I was going to do to it, he wept like a child. He offered to return his fee, plus his meager life savings. It was pitiful. I read his book in a single sitting and then burned it in my fireplace, right over there, behind my bear.”

Hodges’s face was drained of color.

“My God,” he said. “What was it about?”

Terry threw back his head and laughed.

“Wouldn’t
you
like to know!”

• • •

Elliot led me back into the billiards room and picked up the game where he had left off. When he was finished beating me, I asked him a question that had been on my mind for some time.

“Elliot? What does your father do?”

Elliot repeated the question to himself, as if trying to make sense of it.

“Oh!” he said, finally. “You mean his
profession.”

He laughed.

“He’s never worked a day in his life.”

“So what does he do all day?”

“He spends money and drinks.”

“Is he…a philanthropist?”

Elliot shook his head firmly.

“Absolutely not. My family only gives money to charity when it’s absolutely necessary for tax purposes. And even then, we only give to foundations that are trying to cure diseases the Allagashes are genetically predisposed to, like hemophilia and gout. There’s the Allagash Prize, I guess, but I wouldn’t exactly call that charity.”

“What’s the Allagash Prize?”

“It’s a kind of academic scholarship that Terry set up at his old club at Harvard. Every year, it goes to the senior who received the lowest cumulative grade point average while still managing to graduate. The winner is paid in alcohol.”

“Jesus!” I said. “But—if he doesn’t have a job—what does he
do
all day?”

Elliot shrugged.

“He likes magic. Sometimes, he’ll hire a magician to come over and perform illusions for him. While he’s eating lunch…or in the bathroom.”

“How often does he do that?”

“Often,” he said. “He doesn’t like to be tricked, though. So usually, at the end of the session, he’ll pay the magician however much extra cash is necessary in order to get him to reveal his secrets.”

“What
else
does he do?” I asked breathlessly.

“He meets with lawyers. To fend off lawsuits and escape punishment for his crimes.”

“What kind of crimes?”

I could tell Elliot was getting annoyed by all my questions, but I couldn’t stop myself.

“Conspiracies, mostly.”

“What kind of conspiracies?”

Elliot smacked his tiny fist against the billiards table suddenly.

“Look—anybody can do what Terry does! Okay? He has no elegance. It’s all just
brute force!
He’s never pulled off an artful scheme in his life!”

He sat down next to me and sighed heavily, exhausted by his outburst.

“That reminds me,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

“What?”

“How would you like to be class president?”

I laughed. My life at Glendale had definitely gotten easier in the past few weeks. Since basketball tryouts, Lance had stopped fighting with me, or at least had toned down his attacks. And while the nickname Chunk-Style still elicited laughter, it no longer drew applause. That said, I was in no position to run for public office.

“How would you do
that?”

“Just answer the question,” Elliot said. “Yes or no.”

I shrugged.

“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”

• • •

I swept my fork across my plate, trawling for any remaining shreds of brisket.

“Are you still hungry?” my mom asked. “There’s one more slice.”

“Oh, no thanks,” I said. “I’m full.”

“What about you, honey?”

My father waved his arms in the air.

“I’m stuffed, love. Why don’t you take it?”

My mother shook her head.

“I’ll just wrap it up,” she said.

My father and I nodded. All of us wanted the brisket, but this ritual of offering one another the final slice was a very important part of our week. We were all obsessed with brisket and relinquishing the last piece was probably the most loving gesture we could make to one another. There was always a soggy slab Saran-wrapped in our fridge, a testament to our family’s powerful bond.

I started to talk about my day, to distract myself from the meat, and before long, I had announced my candidacy for class president.

“I think it’s great!” my father said, after a long, shocked silence. “Even if you don’t win, it’ll be a really fun experience.”

My parents continued to praise me for a while, making sure to qualify all their compliments with “even if you don’t win.”

“I’m pretty sure I’ll win,” I told them.

“Are there…other people running?” my mom asked, gently.

“Yeah,” I said. “But Elliot offered to be my campaign manager.”

Whenever I mentioned Elliot’s name, my parents glanced anxiously at one another. They were thrilled that I had finally found a close friend. But they were also frightened, because that friend was Elliot Allagash.

“Wow!” my mom said. “Between basketball and this, you’re really spending a lot of time with Elliot!”

I nodded.

“Is he going to help you make posters?” my father asked.

I tried to picture Elliot squeezing Elmer’s glue onto a piece of construction paper.

“I don’t think he’ll help with posters,” I said. “But he’s good at…planning things.”

My father looked at me.

“What kinds of things?”

I shrugged.

“Just…things.”

My parents shared another look.

“Dad? Where did Elliot’s dad get all of his money?”

“From
his
dad.”

“But where did
he
get it?”

My father laughed.

“From
his
dad.”

“But where does it all come from? Do they own buildings, like Lance’s family?”

“Oh, sure,” my dad said. “They own entire companies.”

“But that’s not where the money
comes
from,” my mom said.

“Right,” my dad said. “Those are just things they bought with it.”

My mom shook her head softly.

“It all comes from that patent. Right? Just that one little find.”

My father twisted his paper napkin into a coil and nodded.

“Just that one little find.”

• • •

Cornelius Allagash was born on the South Street docks in 1775, just minutes after arriving in New York City. His mother was nine and a half months pregnant, according to legend, but the unborn capitalist refused to emerge until he had landed on American soil.

Cornelius’s parents were hardworking Dutch cobblers. They failed to make enough money to send their boy to school, but Cornelius was bright. He learned to speak English by attending free sermons in City Hall Park. And after swiping a Bible from a lecturer, he taught himself to read. Before long, he had started a successful bootlegging business, selling his moonshine for two shillings a jar.

By the age of twenty-one, Cornelius had amassed enough shillings to buy himself a horse. But his prospects were limited; his house was only large enough for a single still, and it took him nearly a month to produce each barrel. Desperate to get ahead, Cornelius bought some rudimentary chemistry books and attempted to speed up his brewing process. He experimented with different chemical combinations, testing out batches on his horse. But every single trial ended poorly. One day—Christmas of 1800, according to his autobiography—Cornelius became so dizzy from the fumes that he passed out. As he collapsed, he dropped a wooden bucket into the still, smacked his head against a stone wall, and crumpled onto the basement floor. He was unconscious for a few minutes, and when he came to, he couldn’t find his bucket. The vessel had vanished. He was beginning to doubt his sanity when he noticed something strange inside his still. The surface
of his whiskey-chemical mixture was coated with a thin layer of brown fiber. He ladled out a scoop and examined it by candlelight; it had the consistency of grain, but the softness of sand. His bucket, it seemed, had been pulverized on contact.

Cornelius didn’t know what had happened, exactly, but he knew his latest chemical might have value. Anything that could break down wood so efficiently had to be useful to somebody. The city, after all, was clogged with dilapidated tenements and running out of space all the time. You couldn’t destroy them with fire; the entire city could go up in smoke. Maybe this chemical could help clear the brush down by the Bowery. There was so much wood in the city, piled into clapboard houses south of Wall, to say nothing of the sprawling forests north of Fourteenth Street. Something that turned it into something else, even mush, had got to be worth something.

In order to patent the chemical, he had to scientifically classify it. So he hired an alcoholic schoolteacher—one of his best clients—to analyze it, in exchange for a jar of moonshine and one percent of any profits that resulted from the discovery. The schoolteacher asked for two jars of moonshine in lieu of the one percent, but Cornelius wouldn’t relent. He didn’t have two jars to spare. After a fair amount of arguing, the schoolteacher spent five minutes scrutinizing the substance—it was calcium bisulfite, i.e. Ca(HSO
₃
)
₂
—and signed his name on the dotted line. Today, his progeny are among the richest people in North America. His great-great-grandson lives on a private island in the South Pacific and is rumored to have a personal brothel with more than seventy full-time employees.

Cornelius Allagash forgot about his little experiment, gave up chemistry, and opened up a tavern in the Bowery. Then, five years later, a hardworking German tinkerer thought to press Cornelius’s pulp into sheets and let it dry. He was amazed: The sheets retained the strength of wood, but they were polished and smooth. The wood levels could be adjusted to change the sheets’ thickness; dye could be added to change their color. They looked like the linens you found in a rich man’s bed or the smooth fabric you found in a minister’s Bible. But this material was so cheap to make, you wouldn’t even have to go to church to see a Bible anymore. You could make your own.

Cornelius Allagash had invented paper.

From that date forward, every paper manufacturer in the western world had to pay the Allagashes for the privilege of turning wood into pulp. Elliot’s family owned a small percentage of every cardboard box in existence. They owned a portion of every envelope, a fraction of every baseball card. They made money when people wrapped gifts and collected every time they used toilet paper. They made money from ticker tape parades, whether they took place in Times Square or Nazi Germany. They made money when Japanese schoolchildren sent paper cranes to flood victims and when lonely people wrote their suicide notes. They made money off of every page of every book ever written—textbooks and comics, pornography and Bibles, fat city phone books and little girls’ diaries. The Allagashes made money whenever anybody jotted down notes or signed a bill. They owned wallpaper and Kleenex, magazines and newspapers, cards and checks and stamps.

They even owned money itself.

• • •

Elliot carried around a leather-bound book in his breast pocket. It was small but very thick, and its edges were frayed from use. The cover was solid black, except for a single word that had been stitched onto the center with golden thread:
Enemies
. Elliot rarely laughed, but when he did, it was usually while looking though the pages of this book. Terry had given it to him as a present for his seventh birthday, and he had kept it on his person ever since.

Sometimes, after hearing some news from James on his cell phone, Elliot would take out his book and make a check mark next to one of the names listed inside, using a tiny silver fountain pen he kept specifically for this purpose. He made these check marks slowly and deliberately, as if savoring the gesture. It was a terrifying book and I’ll never forget the first time I saw it.

Elliot’s first act as my campaign manager was to organize a celebratory lunch.

“Shouldn’t we wait until we’ve won?” I asked.

Elliot ignored me and dragged me outside to his waiting limo. He barked out an address, and James sped us over to a windowless midtown restaurant with giant brass doors. Elliot hopped out and motioned for me to follow.

“What is this place?” I asked.

“It’s the Winchester,” Elliot said. “The most exclusive restaurant in Manhattan, if not the world.”

Elliot had lent me his largest suit for the occasion, and it was so tight, I could only take short, shallow breaths. We had changed beside each other in his private dressing room, and it had been a
disturbing experience. I knew Elliot was the skinniest kid in the grade, but I didn’t know
how
skinny until I saw him without his shirt on. When he bent over to slip on his socks, I could count all the vertebrae in his spine. And when he reached up to grab his waistcoat, I thought I could see his rib cage pulsing in time with his beating heart.

He checked his cuff links, and mine, and led me into the Winchester’s mahogany vestibule.

“We could just go to a regular place,” I pleaded.

Elliot flashed me one of his more intense and terrifying stares. I took a deep breath and followed him to a table in the back.

“This is an historic location,” Elliot told me. “All of the great New York candidates launched their runs from this room! Boss Tweed, Handsome Jimmy Walker…”

He continued to rattle off names until the maître d’ approached. He was a grim-looking Frenchman with a carefully groomed moustache.