On the screen of his laptop there’s a sequence of market data charts showing previous private equity IPO performance levels. He scrolls down through them, stopping occasionally to study this or that one more closely for a moment.
He’s looking for ammunition.
And the evidence here, as far as he’s concerned, is pretty encouraging. On an each-way bet it’s still a negative benefit outcome-because they either flatline or they tank. Which is just as well, because as Vaughan has so subtly illustrated with his “black file,” the idea of Oberon opening its books to public scrutiny is a non-runner anyway.
Howley closes the laptop and looks back at the TV screen.
There is a panel discussion going on, and it’s getting quite animated. “Look, it’s very clear,” someone is saying, “check it yourself, it’s Title Eighteen of the United States Code, section thirty-one oh nine…”
“What are they talking about?” Howley says.
Jessica turns around. She’s still standing there in the middle of the room with her hand on her hip. She does that sometimes. It’s her slightly haughty, noncommittal way of watching TV-watching, but ready to drop it and walk away at a moment’s notice. “Oh, they’re discussing the, what did you call it, the fine art of how to execute a search warrant.”
“Arrest or search?”
“Search. That’s what they said. Why?”
“Because they’re different. With a search you’re obliged to… knock and announce, I think they call it.”
“How do you know that?”
“The curse of a photographic memory. I read it somewhere. Who can say?”
“Well, one of these guys is arguing exactly that, he’s saying they followed procedure, and the other one is saying they’d have been within their rights to just barge in there unannounced.”
“Uh-uh.” Howley shakes his head. “Though it’s a pity they didn’t. Because look.” The street scene from earlier is on again. “The city doesn’t need this.”
Jessica turns back and looks at it.
“No, it certainly does not.” She shakes her head as well. “With the benefit coming up? Please.” She clicks her tongue. “They’d better resolve this fast, that’s all I can say.”
The benefit is a Kurtzmann Foundation fund-raiser, a gala event Jessica has been working on for months.
She turns around again. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready, darling? The Lowensteins will be here in an hour.”
He nods, yes, yes.
When she leaves the room he opens the laptop again. His statement for tomorrow is still a little rough around the edges, but he’ll keep chipping away at it. There are certain subtle points he needs to make, ideas he needs to implant. A lot of people will be paying attention.
Though on that, something occurs to him.
He glances up at the TV again.
If this siege thing has any legs at all, it’ll swamp the next couple of news cycles, at least, and there’s one person he knows who’ll be happy about that.
James Vaughan.
People know the Oberon name, the brand, but very few people have actually heard of Vaughan himself, and that’s how he’d like to keep it. Howley can well imagine how much Vaughan is dreading the public nature of this handover tomorrow-especially if it’s going to be presented in the context of his ailing health.
So any distraction will be welcome.
And this one certainly seems to be shaping up nicely.
Vaughan won’t be at the press conference himself, but he’ll be referenced endlessly, and his office will be inundated with media requests.
Howley closes the laptop again and puts it down beside him on the couch. He looks around for the remote but can’t find it.
He gets up and stands there, Jessica-style, staring at the screen.
This is crazy stuff.
But however it pans out over the next six, twelve, even twenty-four hours, he’s pretty sure that with words like “explosives” and “evacuation” now creeping into the narrative, Vaughan won’t have a whole lot to worry about in the morning.
When he looks up, and around, and sees that they’re at 110th Street already, Central Park just over to the right, Frank realizes, remembers, that he hasn’t been into the city for months, three or four at least. But gliding down Fifth now, he feels nauseous, dizzy, as though he’s being delivered to his own execution.
Ellen Dorsey is driving.
He turns to his left and looks at her. She’s staring straight ahead, both hands on the wheel, arms rigid.
Tense, silent.
The last two hours have been like this, neither of them wanting to speak-he, for obvious reasons, and she… well, who knows? Maybe she’s embarrassed. Maybe she’s out of her depth. Maybe she’s calculating how much money she can make out of this.
He doesn’t know.
He’s glad she’s driving his car, though.
Because he couldn’t.
He stares out the window now, the cross streets clocking down like a ticking bomb… Fifty-seventh, Forty-second, Thirty-fourth, Twenty-third.
She takes a left at Fourteenth and gets onto the FDR Drive.
The Lower East Side is a part of town that somehow seems abstract to Frank, as they approach it-doesn’t seem like a Lizzie sort of place at all. What comes to mind, if he does think about it, is the Tenement Museum… immigrant families, old photographs, vintage storefronts, fire escapes, raggedy kids playing around a water hydrant, that street panorama from Godfather II. He knows these are stereotypes, but it’s not as if he ever had occasion to come down here, when he was working in the city.
Which was midtown. Mostly.
Uptown, a bit.
Mostly where he lived was Brooklyn, and that, he thinks, definitely is a Lizzie sort of place, the house they had in Carroll Gardens, for instance… up the stoop, in the door, take the stairs two at a time and over to the right… her room…
So vivid.
What he hopes here, for this, the ideal outcome, is that he arrives on Orchard Street just as they’re parading the three of them out of the building, perp-walking them out the door, the two brothers first, whatever they look like-he doesn’t know, or care-and then the girl. He’s standing there, he looks up and it isn’t her…
It’s someone else, someone taller, skinnier, darker, it doesn’t matter, it isn’t Lizzie, and this is all a mistake, a misunderstanding.
Wires got crossed.
Ellen Dorsey here got her facts wrong.
Slumped in the car seat now, staring down, he replays this scene multiple times in his head.
“Are you ready, Frank?”
“What?”
He looks up, and around. They’re on Grand Street.
“We’re just coming to Orchard now,” she says.
Before he has properly refocused, they’re turning right and facing north again. He was certainly right about the fire escapes. And up ahead, two blocks, he sees it-the crowds, the police barriers, the blue lights rotating. He can’t see beyond that. Because this is just the periphery.
“There’s a space,” he says, pointing. “We’re not going to get much closer than this. We can walk.”
Ellen Dorsey nods and pulls in.
Quickly, they get out of the car and start moving.
Frank’s heart is pounding. Earlier he was concerned about media intrusion, journalists, photographers. He was also concerned for a while about seeing Deb. But now he feels he’ll be able to bypass all of that. Because the only thing he’s concerned about right now is Lizzie, and the idea that she’s somewhere in the middle of this circus.
They come to Delancey, and it starts there, on the far side-the barriers, the onlookers, the cops, the outside broadcast units, the camera operators, the booms, the cables and tripods and mikes, the reporters.