Chapter 29
Frank Cohane was at the helm of his twelve-meter yacht Expensive off Monterey Bay in a stiff breeze, running time trials in preparation for the America’s Cup, when his cell phone went off. Whenever Frank was on the boat, his cell phone was programmed to accept calls only from his secretary, who was instructed to call him only if it was a matter of apocalyptic urgency.
“Yeah, Jean, what?” he barked. Expensive had just rounded the upwind mark. The crew was setting the spinnaker, a delicate procedure and one requiring total concentration from the helmsman.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, Mr. Cohane, but there’s a reporter from the Yale Daily News insisting that he speak with you.”
“The Yale what? Who?”
“He says he needs to talk to you about a story he’s writing saying-these were his words-that you, quote, bribed Yale to keep them from expelling Boyd.…?Mr. Cohane?…Sir?”
“Fuck!” Frank Cohane threw the cell phone overboard.
“Mr. Cohane-sir! She’s jibing! Jibe-ho!”
There was a loud rip forward, the sound of $60,000 worth of Mylar turning itself from a huge mono-bosom into something resembling a shredded party favor.
“Mr. Kane?” Jean said to the Yale Daily News reporter. “I’m sorry to keep you holding. Mr. Cohane and I were cut off. He’s at sea, on his yacht. Let me try to reach him. I’ll call you back.”
Charlie Kane, Yale sophomore, staff writer for the “Oldest College Daily”-as the Yale Daily News proudly called itself-told Mr. Cohane’s pleasant secretary that his deadline was in three hours. He hung up and went back to writing his story.
It had come to him, as many of the really good stories do, in a hand-me-down way. A girl in his philosophy class had a friend who had gone out with Boyd Baker. Boyd was one of the campus’s more conspicuous party animals. He’d managed to flunk all his courses and had been asked to leave and spend a year, as Yale put it, “reassessing your priorities.” And then nothing happened. He just stayed.
One dawn, after a long night of snorting Ritalin and Ecstasy with his girlfriend, Boyd confided to her that his stepfather, some humongously rich California tech guy, had bribed Yale to the tune of $25 million to keep him on. What a great story! Charlie thought. The election for next year’s editorial board was coming up, and with a story like this under his belt, Charlie would have a good shot at editor in chief.
While he waited for the phone to ring, Charlie typed: “Attempts to reach Frank Cohane on his sailboat were unavailing.” He looked at the sentence, deleted it. He Googled “Cohane” and “America’s Cup,” examined the matches, and typed: “Attempts to reach Frank Cohane aboard his ultra-high-tech, well-named yacht Expensive were unavailing.”
He wondered if he ought to change “attempts” to the singular.
“Who’s got a phone?” Frank Cohane snapped his fingers. “Who’s got a phone? Someone’s got to have a fucking phone!”
The tactician rummaged in a carry case and handed him his.
“Take the wheel,” Frank said. Expensive was back on an upwind tack now, having rounded another marker. Frank stormed forward, stepping on the hands of several crewmen who were leaning over the rails, hiking to windward to counterbalance the boat. They knew better than to say, “Ow!” much less, “Hey, watch where you’re going, asshole!”
“Jean. It’s me. Patch me through to that Yale kid.”
“Mr. Kane? I have Mr. Cohane on the line. Go ahead, sir.”
“Mr. Cohane? Hello. My name is Charles-”
“Yeah, yeah. Look, this is Frank Cohane. What the-”
The portion of Frank Cohane’s brain that was not on fire with rage and fury tried to say, Easy does it, big shot. But when driven men board their own yachts and assume command, the inner Bligh is invariably released and does not easily relinquish the helm. Frank Cohane couldn’t help himself.
“-fuck is this you’re telling my secretary? Did you use the word bribe? Did you actually say bribe?”
Charlie Kane, all of age twenty-one, had not yet in his brief career as a reporter been bitch-slapped by a California billionaire. He had only one thought in his mind: editor in chief.
“Ah, well, sir, it does appear that you visited the president’s office on the twenty-fourth of last month. According to the president’s appointments calendar. And the development office records do show a donation made later that same day from the Cohane Charitable Trust in the amount of fifteen million”-Charlie’s source had inflated the amount of the bribe, but he’d caught the error-“and your stepson, Boyd Baker, had, previous to that, been informed that he was on academic suspension. He confirmed that detail himself.”
Frank winced. Boyd! Imbecile!
Charlie Kane continued, “And the fact is that he is still enrolled at Yale. So in connecting the dots, I-”
“Connecting the dots? Connecting the dots? Do you think this is some kind of game? Let me ask you something, Mr. Kane,” Frank said. “Do you know how many lawyers I have, just on staff?”
“I wouldn’t have that information, but from the way you’re asking, I’d guess, quite a few, sir?”
“Twenty-five. Twenty-five lawyers. Full-time. Sharks, all of them. Great whites. They never sleep. They just keep moving forward, suing everything in their path.…”
“That does seem like a lot of lawyers, I agree, sir.”
“You’re fucking damn right it’s a lot! And if they’re not enough, I can afford to hire every other lawyer in the country. And I will, if you print a false and malicious story-false, malicious, libelous, and defamatory. I’m formally putting you on notice here that-Jesus Christ, I…I can’t even believe I’m having to tell you this. Is there a crime in giving money to your college? Don’t you think I care about Yale? Do you think I give this kind of money to, to-Harvard?”
“I don’t think that’s really the point here, sir.”
“Mr. Kane,” Frank said, trying a calmer, cooler-indeed, icier-tone of voice, “understand something. For your own well-being. Understand that I will sue you-you personally, not the Yale Daily News-if you print a story saying that I quote-unquote bribed Yale. I give you full warning. I will take the food from your table, from your parents’ table, and from your grandparents’ table. Am I making myself clear?”
“Actually, sir, my grandparents are deceased.”
“Don’t fuck around with me, you little zit! Look me up in Forbes magazine. I have resources you can’t even imagine. I will grind your bones to dust and use them for fertilizer. Do you hear me?…Kane?”
Charlie Kane could hardly believe his luck. Dude was postal! His fingers flew over the keyboard. “Um-hum.”
“What you do mean, ‘Um-hum’?”
“So that is your comment? That you’re going to impoverish my family and turn me into fertilizer?”
“My comment? My comment, Mr. Kane, is that you’re a dead man. Let me spell it for you, so you get at least that much right: d-e-a-d. Got it?”
“Yes, sir. D-e-a-d. Thank you. Good luck with the race.”
And with that, Frank Cohane hurled another innocent cell phone into the vast deep of the Pacific Ocean. He stormed aft to the wheel. As he did, the crew leaning over the rail withdrew their hands, one by one.