Swindlers (6 page)

“Yes, no…not exactly,” I mumbled
incoherently.

“Yes, no, not exactly? What kind of answer is
that?” laughed Tommy.

“He told me that he might need a lawyer, but
I’m not really sure anymore that it was his idea. I’m not sure it
wasn’t his wife’s idea instead.”

I told him what had happened, how she said we
had met before, and the strange reaction she had when she realized
that I did not remember, but Tommy was not listening; he was
enjoying too much some thought of his own.

“No, I didn’t!” I protested when I realized
what it was.

“You weren’t screwing around with Nelson St.
James’ gorgeous wife? You’re going to tell me that nothing
happened?”

We had known each other too long, known each
other too well. His laughing eyes taunted me with what they
knew.

“I kissed her, once – that’s all,” I
insisted.

He raised an eyebrow and nodded eagerly,
waiting, certain there was more and that I would not be able to
stop myself from telling him.

“I shouldn’t have done it, and I knew it, and
it didn’t matter: as soon as it happened, I wanted to again. It was
after dinner, and there had been a lot of drinking, and she asked
me to meet her up on deck. That’s when it happened, and then her
husband showed up and -”

“He caught you? What did -?”

“He didn’t see us. That’s what we thought,
anyway. As soon as she heard him, she disappeared. Then he saw me,
standing there alone, and he came over and started talking about
his wife, how she was probably downstairs in bed with someone else,
and then he let me know that he knew she had been there with me. I
don’t think he saw us; I think he was guessing, but guessing the
way you do when you’re sure of something, when you know it, when
you can feel it. Then, later, she slipped into my room.”

Tommy’s blue eyes glittered in anticipation
of what he was certain must have happened. I did not say anything
and let him know by my silence that there was something unusual,
unpredictable, about what had happened.

“She came to tell me that she could not see
me again – nothing had happened, just that one, fugitive kiss.
That’s when she told me that we had known each other before and
that she knew I did not remember. And that was all. She did not
tell me where, or when, or anything. I’ve tried to remember. It
doesn’t seem possible. Who could forget her?’

“Maybe she just wanted to make you crazy. One
thing’s for sure: you’ll never forget her now.”

“You’re probably right about that,” I sighed.
“I’ll never see her again, but I won’t forget her.”

“You might see her again. St. James is still
going to need a lawyer.”

I reminded him that it was not the kind of
case I took.

“I wouldn’t know what to do in a securities
case. I do simple things like murder.”

Tommy tossed his head in silent laughter,
acknowledging the point, and then rested his elbows on the table
and pressed his fingers together. He became quite serious.

“What he’s done is worse than murder, the
lives he helped ruin. Though to give him credit, he’s more honest
than most of them, or maybe just more immoral. He’s certainly more
interesting than the rest of that Wall Street crowd.”

He thought about what he had just said, then
pushed back from the table and crossed one leg over the other. He
sat at an angle, with his arms folded and a pensive, almost
brooding expression on his mouth.

“I used to love this country; I’m not sure I
do anymore. I used to think there was a clear line between right
and wrong, that those who broke the law got punished. I was not so
naïve to believe that everyone who broke the law got caught, but I
thought that even those who got away with something knew they had
something to hide. And that’s true, for ordinary criminals, the
guys that break into houses, who steal money at the point of a gun.
But these guys on Wall Street, guys who head up banks and
corporations, the whole New York financial crowd – they don’t give
a damn about anything except the money. Money is the only measure
and only fools and suckers care about the rules. They rigged the
markets, made billions doing it and thought themselves shrewd
investors instead of thieves. That’s what makes St. James so damn
interesting: He realized what America had become – what no one else
could see – not a country, but a system of organized theft. None of
the others understood what they were doing. They had no
self-awareness, if I can put it like that. They were just doing
what everyone else did: bend the rules a little, maybe even break
them once in a while, because the rules weren’t really that
important: technical stuff mainly, rules about insider trading,
that kind of thing, nothing serious. If you got caught you might
get a fine, might even, in the rare case, go off to prison for a
year or two, but even then it was still a civil matter, nothing
like what real criminals do. You know,” he said as a jaundiced grin
ran sideways across his lips, “murderers, rapists, and thieves –
least of all thieves. These guys could steal billions, cost
thousands of decent, hard working people – people who would never
cheat anyone out of anything – their life savings, but that didn’t
put them in the same category as some guy who instead of growing up
in Greenwich, Connecticut did not know his father, and instead of
going to Harvard did not finish the tenth grade, a guy desperate
for a few bucks grabs a woman’s purse and gets caught in the
attempt. That’s the real lesson about what kind of country we’ve
become: steal from one person, go to jail; steal from thousands,
hundreds of thousands, steal from millions – say you’re sorry and
start a charity.”

Tommy’s eyes were solemn, remote, with a look
of grim remembrance etched deep within them. A rueful smile, the
silent echo of something he had once believed, a shattered faith,
twisted down the corners of his mouth.

“It was hypocrisy, pure and simple,” he went
on. The words came more slowly now. He was trying to explain as
clearly as he could what he had been thinking about for months,
trying to summarize in a few short sentences what he had only begun
to understand. He narrowed his eyes and clenched his jaw, and began
to wag his finger back and forth, like someone determined to
correct the mistaken judgment, the false assumptions, not of other
people, but of himself. “Hypocrisy, but necessary to their own
sense of who they were; hypocrisy, but they never knew it: they
could not afford to know it, to admit it. They had to think they
deserved all the money; they had to believe that they were the ones
who made everything work, that without them the markets could not
function and the economy could not exist. They had to believe that
it was only because they controlled the financial system that this
was the wealthiest country in the world. They did not have the
courage, the strength of will, to look things in the face and admit
that they were only doing it for themselves. They needed a country
to believe in, a country gullible and greedy enough to believe in
them, a country dumb enough to let them think themselves heroes,
admired and envied and respected for what they did. That’s why St.
James was so successful, more successful than any of them: he knew
it was all a lie. He doesn’t believe in anything: that’s the key to
his success. He’ll take advantage of anyone and never give it a
second thought. He’ll do anything, and that’s what makes him so
dangerous, and, in a certain way, admirable.”

I nearly fell off my chair. Admirable would
have been the last thing I would have expected him to say about the
man he had just described.

“I mean it,” he assured me. “St. James
doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what he is. He doesn’t
make excuses or insist that he’s only doing what everyone else is
doing. You’ll never hear him talk about the system, and how much
depends on people like him; he gives none of those chamber of
commerce speeches about the virtues of the free market. I said he
doesn’t believe in anything. I meant any of the things that act as
a restraint on how far we’re willing to go to get what we want. He
believes in money, that the only thing that’s important is that you
have it and that you keep getting more. Those others, the ones that
always talk about how much they’ve done for the prosperity of the
country – St. James doesn’t have a country, he has that ship of
his. Everyone talks about a global economy – what better place to
run it than a ship that can go anywhere in the world?”

I remembered what one of the other guests
aboard Blue Zephyr had said.

“Where the government can never reach him. We
had an interesting conversation,” I explained. “He made a curious
point, how so many of the people who get indicted, men with more
than enough money to go off to some country without an extradition
treaty, just stayed and went quietly to prison.”

With a knowing look, Tommy gestured
emphatically with his hand.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to say. Most of
them are too respectable to think about getting away. They go to
trial, or take a plea, and go off to jail without a protest.
Someone charged with murder – they’d run like hell if they had the
chance, wouldn’t they? They know they’re criminals; they don’t feel
any obligation to do what’s expected. St. James is like that. He’s
an outlaw in the classic sense, someone who rejects the rules, who
won’t do anything he doesn’t want. There’s a certain strength of
character in that. When he finally goes to court, when he’s finally
convicted, you won’t hear him say he’s sorry. And you sure as hell
won’t hear him asking anyone to forgive him for what he did.”

We finished dinner, but there was still wine
to drink and so we stayed and talked some more, a rambling
conversation that moved in fits and starts from one subject to
another, one of us suddenly remembering something we had wanted to
say. Tommy had become quieter, more introspective, but at the same
time less guarded in the way he expressed himself. He was the best
friend, perhaps the only real friend, I had, but we had not seen
each other in a while and there had been some major changes in his
life.

“What I said about… that look of
disappointment in her eyes; that wasn’t really fair. I think she
was more disappointed for me. I liked all the attention, I liked
the crowd; I was used to it, all the cheering, the way that
everyone looked at you when you walked across campus, the way
everyone waited for you after the game. I wanted a pro career. I
did not want it to stop. I went to law school because I didn’t know
what else to do. That look of disappointment, that was not her,
that was me. Maybe that’s why, despite my better judgment, I can’t
help but admire St. James a little. He’s like what I was – what you
were, too – in college. We didn’t follow anyone’s rules but our
own, we were better than the game. Everyone wanted to know us, get
close to us. We could have anything we wanted and we never thought
there was anything wrong with it. We could have any woman we wanted
and I married the best looking girl in school, and he married damn
near the best looking woman in the world.”

“Danielle is all of that,” I agreed.

“That’s not her real name, you know,” he
remarked quite casually. It was nothing important, a minor fact he
had picked up along the way, something anyone who conducted a
criminal investigation, or simply followed the New York social
scene and knew something about the world of high fashion, would
have known. “‘Danielle’ was the name she used as a model. Just that
one word. Clever, when you think about it; different, easy to
remember. The most famous model in New York, the face that for a
while was on practically every magazine cover any woman cared to
buy. She was beautiful, and St. James was rich and good looking. So
now she’s Mrs. Justine St. James, and along with her husband, is
about to lose everything she’s got.”

“Justine? Is that what you said?”

“Justine Llewelyn, that was her real
name.”

“Justine Llewelyn, who grew up near San
Francisco, the other side of the bay?”

“As a matter of fact, she did. Why? – Oh, I
see. You did know her then.”

I was shaking my head in disbelief. Justine
Llewelyn. I had not seen her since her older sister, the girl I
wanted to marry, had broken our engagement.

“Justine was all of about sixteen, skinny as
a rail and plain looking except for her eyes. A nice, quiet, shy
kid. She felt sorry for me, after what her sister did, and she told
me that she would marry me, when she was old enough. I remember
laughing and telling her that she could do much better. And now
she’s Danielle, and I didn’t remember a thing about her.”

CHAPTER Four

Though it had been more than a dozen years
since I had last seen her, Carol Llewelyn greeted me as if I had
married into the family and had been gone only a few weeks.

“It’s been a long time,” I remarked.

“I’ve followed your career,” she said with a
brief smile. “I always knew you would do well.”

Opening the trunk of her car, she reached for
the metal sign. I started to help, but she swung it free on her
own, joking that it was the only exercise she got. She carried the
bright red and blue open house sign to the bottom of the driveway
and placed it in front of the stone pillar on the right side of the
open iron gate. She stood there for a moment, her eyes full of
hopeful calculation, as she looked first at the house she was
trying to sell and then down the curving narrow two lane road.
Trying to guess what effect the searing summer heat might have, she
squinted up at the sky. There might not be many people out looking
on a day like this; on the other hand, the ivy covered house, set
back from the road under the shade of a massive spreading oak,
promised a welcome refuge from the blinding mid-day sun. With a
quick glance that said she thought things were fine, she started up
the drive, the staccato sound of her high heel shoes cracking the
silence of the burning air.