There are voices, roars, shouts, but in all the confusion, as he clambers up, hand on the front of a town car next to Lebrecht’s limo, Baxter has no clear idea of what he’s hearing. Nor, when he turns around and manages to focus, does he have much idea of what he’s seeing, either.
Because there on the ground, still struggling, are the doorman and what Baxter can only assume is a gunman, while a few feet away there appears to be a separate struggle going on, as two of the limo drivers try to restrain a second man.
Behind them, a stunned Lebrecht staggers backward, stopping at the granite wall beside the revolving doors.
Baxter doesn’t see any blood or obvious wound.
But then, why would he?
And it’s only in that moment, as he hears the gunshot ring out, that he realizes why he wouldn’t-
Because there was no gunshot before.
There’s certainly one now, though, and it’s followed by a general recoil, a shocked pulling away, which loosens up the two nodal points of the skirmish. In the next couple of seconds the gunman on the ground, along with his accomplice, breaks free. They start running, but in different directions-one to the nearest corner, the other out into the traffic, where he proceeds to zigzag his way through the midmorning chaos of Broadway.
Lebrecht’s driver, standing next to Baxter, decides to give chase and slides over the front of the town car onto the street.
But he is immediately thwarted-blocked by a passing MTA bus.
Baxter turns around again. Like everyone else here, he’s in shock, and having a hard time processing what has happened-in particular the fact that when the gunman discharged his weapon a few moments ago someone apparently took the bullet…
It was-he sees now-one of the other drivers.
He’s alive, still standing, but clutching his side, a fellow driver giving him support. The doorman, back on his feet, is there as well, and on a cell phone, wild-eyed, waving his free hand around, calling 911.
In a sort of post-traumatic slo-mo, Baxter then does a general pan of the area. No one is walking by the front of the hotel, they’re going around it, actually stepping out onto the street to avoid the sidewalk. It’s like some collective but unspoken agreement to preserve the crime scene. There are onlookers, but they’ve formed a partial cordon to the left and right-a no-go area also loosely defined from above by the perimeter of the hotel’s awning.
Within this shaded rectangle of sidewalk, a handful of people stand, or move slowly, making eye contact with one another, shaking their heads in disbelief, waiting. Baxter glances over at Lebrecht, who’s still at the granite wall, looking pale and shaken.
Their eyes meet.
Lebrecht raises an index finger and points it inward, effectively poking himself in the chest, and mouthing, “Me? That was meant for me?”
Baxter shrugs and emits the requisite degree of incredulity, but he experiences something else here, too, a flicker of… what? Ambivalence? Disappointment? To deflect whatever it is he looks away, and that’s when he sees her.
She’s standing just inside the perimeter, to the left, staring at him, holding up her phone, a woman in her late thirties, early forties, dressed all in black.
Not just an onlooker, not just a bystander.
But what, then? Who?
With sirens filling the air, and getting louder, Baxter glances over at the wounded limo driver.
He’s clearly in agony. No blood is visible, though.
Is that good or bad?
Baxter doesn’t know.
As the first siren closes in, with multiple others coming up in the rear, he looks to his left again, still curious, but the woman with the camera phone is no longer there.
On the fifty-seventh floor, at the Oberon reception, no one will talk about anything else. There’s wall-to-wall media coverage, too. He can see it from here, through the glass, it’s on every screen and monitor-the Herald Rygate, Scott Lebrecht.
And the Twittersphere, apparently, is “on fire.”
Not that Craig Howley gives a shit about that.
He’s distracted enough as it is.
Without Vaughan here, it’s like the meeting he chaired on Monday morning, only multiplied by a hundred. That event was an exclusively in-house affair, with just the heads of the various investment groups, whereas this afternoon’s event is wide open, attended by some of the industry’s biggest players, and with pretty much everything, Oberon’s whole succession strategy (Vaughan conspicuous by his absence, Craig Howley clearly in charge) on display.
What he can’t figure out is if all the attention on this shooting at the Rygate is a help or a hindrance. It’ll be a help if it provides a little misdirection, takes some of the heat out of what’s going on here, but if no one even notices in the first place? What use is that?
He circulates, floating in and out of different conversations.
“Well, of course, once is happenstance-”
“Yeah, but Scott’s an arrogant little prick, I mean come on…”
“And how did this not get flagged?”
He actually wishes Vaughan were here.
“-twice is coincidence-”
“You’d imagine Homeland or the NSA’d be all over it like a rash, but Jesus H. Christ-”
“-thinks he’s David O. fucking Selznick-”
The old man is so much better at this than he is.
“-and three times is enemy action.”
A pause.
“Who said that? Henry Kissinger?”
“Auric Goldfinger.”
Everyone laughs.
What worries him most is that Meredith might have taken him the wrong way earlier on, when he called. She was very quiet, which was unusual, so now he has visions of her whispering into Vaughan’s ear like a Borgia, or some scheming harridan from Ancient Rome.
Don’t listen to that awful man.
Get rid of him.
He framed what he had to say as diplomatically as he could. But did he play his hand too soon? Did he make the classic mistake?
“… you create value, and at some point, it’s inevitable, you’re going to want to liquefy it.”
“-it’s a paradigm shift-”
“-but we’re dropping the mandatory arbitration requirement for shareholder disputes, right?”
It’s just as private equity issues are reentering the conversational orbit like this that Howley looks up and sees Angela approaching.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, Mr. Howley,” she says, holding a phone out to him. “It’s Mr. Vaughan.”
Staged as he imagines this might seem to some of the guests here, Howley is genuinely surprised. As he takes the phone from Angela he hands her his glass.
“Jimmy,” he says, and in a louder voice than he intended. Out of the corner of his eye, he notices a sort of wave effect of turning heads. In the circumstances, should he have said Mr. Vaughan? He’s not sure.
“Craig, a word.”
“Of course, Jimmy.” He moves over toward the window, asking himself what this is about. The Rygate thing? The reception? What he said to Meredith?
He stands there, waiting, midtown nestled under a heavy blanket of gray cloud.
“I thought I’d be able to make it in today, but… I’m tired, Craig.”
Howley’s eyes widen. He doesn’t speak.
“I’m on these pills, it’s a new treatment, sort of a trial really, some guys over at Eiben are working on it, but I’ll be honest with you, Craig… I think it might be time to… you know.”
“Oh,” Howley says, his stomach jumping. Though he’ll have to do better than that. “Jimmy, I-”