Graveland: A Novel (33 page)

They spend a few minutes doing catch-up, during which Ellen reacquaints herself with Jimmy’s Irish accent. She also sees definite flickers of his earlier self, but her main impression is of someone who is tired and a bit desperate, someone who has been backed into a corner and can’t see any way out. His pursuit of James Vaughan seemed logical at the outset, given that Vaughan owned most of the companies, most of the
players,
involved in the original affair—Paloma Electronics, Gideon Global, the Rundles—
and
given that he’d been around for, if not directly complicit in, the very event that kickstarted this whole thing in the first place, a helicopter crash at a conference in Ireland that resulted in the deaths of six people. But the very idea of pursuing Vaughan for a specific crime, for any wrongdoing at all, in fact, soon began to seem ridiculous, quixotic even. The corporate and legal firewalls surrounding a man like him were impenetrable. So Gilroy decided to focus instead on Vaughan’s business empire, in a general sort of way, and then on his family.

Which was fine, but there were two slight problems here. Three, really.

One, the subject matter was vast, octopus-like, and it expanded exponentially the more he researched it. And two, who gave a fuck? No one.

Which is still the case. Because the simple fact is, no one outside of business or political circles has ever really heard of James Vaughan. So who’s going to want to buy, let alone read, a book about him?

Which leads neatly on to the third slight problem.

In a scenario like this one, how do you pay the rent?

Well, it turns out that Gilroy did indeed sell his apartment in Dublin. He also has that bar work he mentioned. But how does any of this promote … the career?

“It doesn’t,” he says. “The career is in a sort of holding pattern at the moment.”

Ellen looks at him, brow furrowed. Though she knows what he means, because really, her own career as a journalist is in a holding pattern, too. At least
he’s
got something to focus on, something to be passionate about.

“The thing is,” he continues, “as long as Vaughan is alive, he, or people in his organization, will block this any way they can, and they’ve made things very difficult already, believe me.” He pauses and reaches for his XB. “When Vaughan dies, though? That’s it. Window closed. I mean, all the work I’ve done? It’ll be of historical interest, sure, at
some
point … but that’s not what I signed up for.”

She nods. “What about the stuff that’s going on at the moment? These shootings. The kids down on Orchard Street. The protest movements, the marches, Occupy. Bain. Isn’t there a renewed interest in the whole private equity thing arising out of all that?”

“Yeah, I suppose,” he says, “but there’s a hell of a lot more to James Vaughan than just private equity. He’s managed to fly under the radar for years, but the fact is he’s involved in virtually everything—finance, domestic and foreign policy, intelligence, the military. My basic problem is I’ve written a biography of someone fascinating who no one has really heard of. Don’t get me wrong, they
should
have heard of him, but they haven’t, and there isn’t much I can do about that. No one’s interested. It’s too long for
Parallax
or any other magazine, and publishers just shrug and say who’s James Vaughan?” He pauses. “I suppose I could self-publish, do it as an e-book, but I can’t make the leap. Psychologically. I want someone to make me an offer for it. I want to bloody well get
paid
for my work.”

“I know,” Ellen says, “I know.” But she’s surprised. “You’ve actually finished it?”

“Pretty much. A full draft, give or take. It’s not Robert Caro or anything, it’s fairly succinct. But I knew if I didn’t nail it, and soon, the damn thing would kill me.”

“
House of Vaughan
?”

“Yeah.” He smiles, sheepish. “You want to read it?”

“Nah.” She shakes her head. “Of
course
I do, you moron.”

He reaches into his pocket and takes out a flash drive. He puts it on the bar and slides it across to her.

“I’m paranoid about sending this kind of thing by e-mail. My account has been hacked too many times.”

“Tell me about it.”

She takes the drive and slips it into her pocket. “Thanks. I look forward to reading it.”

And she genuinely does. Because she hopes it amounts to a lot more than what
she’s
done in the last year and a half, which is a dead-end series of articles about failed presidential candidates, followed by this recent, seemingly never-ending attempt to break into a story that has just persisted in eluding her.

She doesn’t relish the prospect of talking about it, though, of telling him about her various interactions with Frank Bishop over the last week or so—but she will, because there’s actually a small part of her that suspects this story can’t go on eluding her forever.

“So,” Jimmy says, shifting on his stool. “Ellen Dorsey. What have
you
been up to?”

14

A
FTER CHAIRING HIS THIRD CONSECUTIVE
M
ONDAY MORNING SIT-DOWN
OF THE SENIOR INVESTMENT DIRECTORS,
Craig Howley is beginning to feel that he has some sort of a grip on things. The Bloomberg interview was a triumph, and he’s been getting texts and messages of congratulation ever since—even more, weirdly enough, than when the actual takeover announcement was made. It’s the power of media exposure, he supposes, something that Vaughan himself would have done well to learn about and try to harness years ago. Howley plans on doing more interviews and has scheduled a meeting for later with Beth Overmyer, Oberon’s VP of communications, to sketch out a new media strategy. As a direct result of tonight’s Kurtzmann benefit at the Waldorf-Astoria, photos of him and Jess will be appearing in multiple platforms across the mediasphere, and it seems sort of crazy not to already have a strategy in place to take advantage of that.

It’s funny, but even a couple of weeks ago—at that cocktail party in the Hamptons, say—he couldn’t have foreseen how quickly, and how far, things would progress.

As he gazes out over the office now, mentally stripping away the mahogany panels and ripping up the pile carpets, Howley gets an alert from Angela that he has a call, and that it’s from Vaughan.

He reaches for the phone. What the fuck is
this
about? Vaughan is the last person he wants to talk to today.

“Jimmy?”

“Yeah. I was thinking.” Good morning to you, too. “A bidding war? Is that really what we want to get into with Tiberius? Because the numbers don’t make a lot of sense to me, Craig. We’re at $23.45 a share, they go $24.15, we counter with $25 something or $26 something, then it’s a war of attrition, no one’s happy, and six months down the road we’re not talking to each other, when we
need
to be, and all over some crappy retail chain that’s overpriced to begin with?”

Howley can’t believe this. And they were only discussing it earlier, at the meeting. As it happens, Vaughan’s analysis is probably correct, but what does he think he’s doing?

“Jesus, Jimmy, I … I don’t understand, what happened to
I’m going to play some golf
? I thought you were supposed to be taking it easy.”

“I
am
taking it easy. But the old batteries are recharged, you know, and I … I can’t help it. I see stuff like this in the papers, what do you want me to do, sit around and
watch
?”

Yes
.

Howley leans far back in his chair and glares up at the ceiling. His batteries are recharged? Holy shit, two weeks ago, less, the man was practically an invalid.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Jimmy.”

“Tell me you agree. Then I’ll set up a lunch with Chris and get him to back off.”

Oh Jesus
.

Chris Beaumont, chairman of Tiberius Capital Partners.

“That’s not a good idea, Jimmy. I mean, really.”

“Why not?”

He has to
explain
it?

“You know what, Jimmy,” he says, “let me think about it and I’ll get back to you, okay?” Then he blusters his way off the phone, saying he’s heading into a meeting.

Unbelievable.

It’s clearly this trial drug Vaughan is on, and something has to be done about it. So less than a minute later Howley is through to Paul Blanford and using some fairly explicit language. The CEO of Eiben-Chemcorp practically has a nervous breakdown on the other end of the line. Howley can hear him hyperventilating.

“I’m doing what I
can,
Craig, Jesus. What
is
this? Tell me what you know.”

Howley swivels in his chair. He’s not far from hyperventilating himself. “Whatever this new drug is,” he says, squeezing the receiver, “there’s someone very high profile who has access to it, okay? And they’re fairly, let’s say … volatile. So when this person eventually loses it, which they
will,
and it gets out that they were hopped up on your untested product, ten years ago will seem like a stroll in the fucking
park,
do you hear me?”

Blanford goes silent, and Howley can almost hear the cogs turning in his brain.

Who?
Who?

It’s the obvious question, but Blanford won’t ask it, not here, not on the phone. It’s only a matter of time in any case. They’re talking about a drug for geriatrics, that much was established in their last conversation, so surely all it will take for Vaughan’s name to come up is one whisper from the rumor mill—one hint of erratic behavior on the old man’s part.

Howley breaks the silence. “You and Cassie are coming this evening, right? To the benefit?”

“Yeah,” Blanford says, though it’s more of a grunt.

“Okay. We’ll talk then.”

Howley hangs up. He gets out from behind his desk and walks over to the window.

He doesn’t feel like laughing exactly, but the idea that Vaughan could go to lunch with someone like Chris Beaumont and just get him to
back off,
and probably with nothing more than a few coded remarks—it’s really quite impressive. Like many of his contemporaries, Howley himself wields a certain degree of power and influence, but it is prosaic, featureless, a function of structure and hierarchy. This is something else entirely. This is something based on the force of personality that is almost occult and mystical. Okay, turning Chris Beaumont so easily would be a very minor manifestation of this power, but at the same time it would serve as an unwelcome reminder that it still existed.

After all these years.

Howley turns from the window and goes back to his desk.

Because his feeling is that Vaughan’s power belongs to a different era, and that these last twitches of its corpse cannot and should not be allowed to distract from Oberon business going forward.

*   *   *

Frank keeps the gun—along with an old pocket watch of his father’s, a couple of fountain pens, and a folder of documents and photos—in a large brown padded envelope. He keeps the envelope under his mattress. Not exactly a high-tech security system, but so what. He used to have a safe when he lived in the apartment in the city, and they had one in the Carroll Gardens house, too, one that was bolted to the floor.

And this is what he has now.

A fucking padded envelope.

He pulls it out from under the mattress and spills its contents onto the bed.

The watch, pens, and other items he ignores. They each in their way have the power to lure him into what would become a vortex of memory and emotion, especially the photos, but he can’t let himself get near any of that stuff now. He picks up the gun, turning it in his hands as he walks away from the bed. It’s a .40 caliber semiautomatic pistol, a Glock 27, Gen 3. It’s got a standard nine-round magazine in it, with a small extension to improve grip.

He’s used it at a firing range, plenty of times, but not for a few years.

He slips it into his jacket pocket.

The concealed-carry handgun of choice.

Or so he was told when he bought it.

He takes it out again and puts it on the kitchen table beside his keys.

He didn’t sleep well last night, if at all, and now he feels really tired. His head was full of the stuff he’s been reading about since he got back here on Saturday—an indiscriminate, unfiltered feed of Wikipedia entries, blog posts, PDF files, and quarterly reports. Halfway through yesterday he lost all sense of what he was doing, but he couldn’t stop, and just continued reading. By the time he lay down he knew that he’d reached saturation point. He also knew that no amount of information was going to make any difference to what he thought or to what he was going to do.

He looks over at the laptop on the couch.

Is there any point in taking it with him?

Not really.

It’s too late for all that now … checking stuff, cross-referencing, verifying. None of it made sense to him at the time anyway. He was just stalling.

He goes into the bathroom and checks himself again in the mirror. He straightens his tie. He looks respectable, as if he’s about to attend a meeting or make a presentation.

He flicks his wrist up to check the time.

10:38
A.M.

He feels like screaming.

He turns away from the mirror, leaves the bathroom, and goes into the kitchen. He gathers up his keys, and the gun, from the table and puts them into his jacket pocket.

He looks around the apartment one more time, and leaves.

It’s early in the day, and he’s got plenty of time—too much time—but he can’t stay around here, in the apartment, in West Mahopac, any longer. So he gets in the car and hits the road.

If it comes to it, he can spend the afternoon staring up at the ceiling of his room at the Bromley.

*   *   *

After a shower and some breakfast, Ellen opens the
House of Vaughan
file and picks up where she left off. She started reading it late last night, having delayed for nearly twenty-four hours, and now she really wants to finish it. As Jimmy Gilroy said the other evening, the book is succinct—just over two hundred pages—but it covers a lot of ground. Not only the story of James Vaughan himself, it’s also about his father and grandfather, and consequently could be—and probably
should
be—four times as long. Someday it may well be, but the brevity of this current version gives it an urgency and punch that Ellen has rarely seen in a standard biography.