‘What do you mean what? Jesus. Are you drunk now, too?’ He pauses. ‘Listen to me, Jimmy, this is… this is very fucking serious.’
Jimmy stares at the Vanity Fair page on the computer screen. Why is it so serious? Is it the fact that Larry Bolger was drunk at ten o’clock in the morning? Is that what Sweeney is afraid will get out?
It’d make sense.
Because it can hardly be the other thing.
‘Jimmy?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Do you hear me? I said this is very serious. You cannot repeat a word of what Bolger said, not to anyone.’
‘But -’
‘If this gets out it will be a complete fucking disaster.’
Jimmy swallows. ‘If what gets out, Phil, the fact that he was drunk?’
‘No, shit, that’s the least -’
And then he stops, obviously struck by what he is about to say.
But Jimmy is struck by it, too. He looks again at the stuff on his desk. ‘The least what, Phil?’ he says. ‘The least of his problems?’ There is a long silence, which tells Jimmy more than any possible answer to the question. ‘Phil,’ he says eventually, ‘you can’t be serious. I was ready to dismiss this. I thought if there was a story here it might be, I don’t know, his struggle with the booze or something, his struggle with reality, which certainly wouldn’t be anything I’d want to write about.’ He pauses. ‘But this -’
‘Write? You won’t fucking write anything, Jimmy. I set you up with this and if it didn’t work out, fine, you walk away from it, we’ll find you something else, but -’
‘No thanks, Phil, and I’ll write whatever the hell I want to write.’
‘That was a confidential conversation, Jimmy, you can’t go around quoting -’
‘I have no intention of quoting him, or even of referring to him. All I’m going to do is look into this. I’m a journalist, Phil. What do you expect me to do?’
No answer. Another pause. Sweeney regrouping. Then, ‘Look, Jimmy, you’re not going to find anything, you’re -’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because… oh fuck.’
Jimmy feels strangely calm through all of this, relieved almost, as though he has been liberated. It’s a feeling that has crept up on him, and as he listens to the normally confidant and sure-footed Phil Sweeney floundering at the other end of the line, he grows in confidence himself.
‘Maybe I won’t find anything, Phil. But this is way too serious an allegation to ignore.’ Glancing at the screen again, and then at one of his notebooks, he decides to take a chance. ‘With too many serious names in the mix. Clark Rundle.’ He pauses. ‘Don Ribcoff.’
As the silence that follows this expands to fill the room, Jimmy’s eyes widen. Eventually, he says, ‘Phil?’
After another moment he hears a slow, laboured intake of breath. ‘Jimmy, listen to me. Leave this alone, will you? I’m serious. You’ve no idea what you’re getting into here.’
Jimmy agrees but he isn’t about to say so.
‘I’ll see you around, Phil,’ he says and hangs up.
On three separate occasions, as he sits in Bolger’s apartment, Dave Conway feels his phone vibrate in his pocket.
Afterwards, walking along the corridor towards the elevator, he takes the phone out and checks it – three missed calls, all from Phil Sweeney.
He stops at the elevator and presses the ‘down’ button.
His hand is shaking.
The elevator door opens and he steps inside.
What can Phil Sweeney tell him at this stage that he doesn’t already know? The damage is done.
He calls him anyway.
‘Phil.’
‘Dave, my God, where have you been? This is a nightmare. Larry and the kid? We shouldn’t have put the two of them together, big fucking mistake.’
See?
‘Yeah.’ Conway presses the button for the ground floor. ‘But how much does this… what’s his name again? The kid?’
‘Jimmy Gilroy.’
‘Right. How much does he know?’
‘Not much, as far as I can tell. But of course now he’s like a dog after a bone. Plus, he’s got names. Whether these came from Larry or not I don’t know. It wasn’t clear.’
‘Names, what do you mean, names?’
As the elevator car descends, floor by floor, Conway feels his insides descending even faster.
‘He mentioned Rundle. And Don Ribcoff.’
‘What?’
‘I think he was bluffing, but it means he’s not working in a vacuum.’
‘Well, can you take care of him?’
The elevator door opens onto the hotel lobby.
‘That depends, Dave. What do you mean exactly?’
Conway doesn’t know. He needs time to think.
He steps out of the elevator.
He needs time to remember. Because how much, actually, does Phil Sweeney himself know? Not everything, that’s for sure. He’d know that certain things happened – but not, in every case, how or why they happened. He’d know names and dates – but not, in every case, their full significance.
There’s a balance to be struck here and Conway needs to be careful. In any case, Phil Sweeney probably isn’t who he should be talking to about this.
Not anymore. Not going forward.
‘Talk him out of it’, he says. ‘That’s what I meant.’
‘Well, I’ll see what I can do, Dave. I suppose there’s still a couple of buttons I can press.’ He pauses. ‘Did you talk to Larry?’
‘Yeah, he’s…’ Conway swallows, still in shock. ‘I don’t know, he’s out of control.’ He stands next to a marble pillar in the lobby. ‘Right now, he’s the very fucking definition of a loose cannon.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘I’m not sure, Phil. But I’ll tell you one thing. I’m up to my neck in this rescue package at the moment and I’m not going to let anything jeopardise it.’
What’s he saying here?
‘Right.’
He’s saying that if this shit gets dredged up again, if questions are asked, if names are mentioned and dots are joined – then that’s it. He may as well pack it in. But that also, basically, he’s not going to allow that to happen.
So who does he talk to?
‘Look, Phil,’ he says, resolve hardening. ‘You deal with this Gilroy fella, OK? Call him off, do whatever you have to do, because I don’t ever want to hear his name again. As for Larry, I really don’t know. I’m going to have to think about it.’
But the fact is he’s already thought about it.
Already thought it through.
And it didn’t take him long.
The important decisions usually don’t.
After he’s done with Phil Sweeney, he keeps the phone in his hand. He crosses the lobby and goes outside. There’s an early evening chill in the air. He stands under the portico.
He gazes out over the hotel’s manicured front lawn.
He looks back at the phone and scrolls through his list of contacts. He finds what he’s looking for. It’s a long time since he’s used this number.
He calls it. He waits. It rings.
‘Good morning, Gideon Global. How may I help you?’
‘Yes, can you put me through to Don Ribcoff, please.’
5
JIMMY HAS BEEN HANDED SOMETHING ON A PLATE HERE, it’s just that he doesn’t know what it is exactly. If Phil Sweeney had opted for Bolger being drunk as the major cause of concern, Jimmy would have had no inclination to take the matter any further. But Sweeney was rattled on the phone and made it obvious that the real problem was what Bolger said, not the state he was in when he said it – a position that only moments earlier Jimmy himself, and all on his own, had somehow managed to reason his way out of.