But it didn’t last, it couldn’t, and after half an hour or so of reading about fiat currencies and the gold standard, the air went out of it all.
Literal deflation.
She persevered, but there wasn’t much point, and the next few hours were like the comedown from an acid trip-or, at least, never having done acid, what she imagined that would be like.
The mention of a Coady uncle didn’t help matters. As far as Julian and Alex were concerned, the prospect of this man maybe standing down on Orchard Street with a bullhorn and saying things certainly seemed to put a dampener on the proceedings, and might have even been the catalyst for each of their subsequent “episodes.”
In any case, Friday morning lurching toward its midpoint, here they are, the three of them, one slumped in a chair, one on the couch, one on the floor.
All waiting.
But for what? The Internet connection to boot back up? Some cable news channel to come on the TV (with an update on the Carillo trial)? An amplified voice from outside to start pleading with them to surrender? The door to be kicked in, followed by the blinding, deafening flash of an M84 stun grenade?
This all feels a lot smaller than it did before-the possible outcomes more limited, the future more boxed in.
It’s the new torpor, and Lizzie doesn’t like it one little bit.
She looks at the guys and wants to scream at them.
But the thing is, what would she say?
The media conference is being held in the Amontillado Suite at the Wilson Hotel on Madison Avenue.
Announced at such short notice, and considering what else is going on in the city, it’ll be a low-key enough affair, but that’s fine. The event will be reported, recorded, live-streamed, and blogged. The message will get out, and there’ll be plenty of opportunity for follow-up. Howley will read his prepared statement, introduce his new COO/head of global infrastructure, and then answer a few questions.
And that’ll be that.
The takeaway here-he hopes-will be the phrase “effective immediately.”
Everything else will be noise and interference.
And heading up to the Wilson now for a midday kickoff, Howley pretty much knows what kind of noise and interference to expect. The more seasoned business hacks-the ones with a genuine sense of history-will want at least some return on the Vaughan angle. How is the old man? Where is he? What are his plans? Others will be focusing more on the succession process, and others again, predictably, will be fishing for any hint of an IPO announcement.
The succession narrative is fairly well established by this stage. For several years, whenever the subject came up, the names of a few high-profile contenders from within the company would be trotted out, but then Vaughan took the decisive step of bringing in an outsider as his new COO, a move widely seen as an unequivocal appoint-and-anoint. It was designed to end the speculation-that much is clear-but it also had the effect of emphasizing just what a one-man show the Oberon Capital Group really was.
Today’s announcement will bring an end to all of that.
As for an IPO, Howley intends to put that issue to bed next week, on Thursday or Friday, when he appears on Bloomberg to do an in-depth interview.
The final arrangements have yet to be made.
Approaching Seventy-first Street now, Howley leans back in his seat and takes a deep breath.
This is the big one, the pinnacle of his career.
Five or six years at the helm of Oberon and he can think about retiring. It’s incredible. Only seems like yesterday that he was moving to D.C. to work as a consultant at the Defense Department.
The car pulls up outside the hotel. Howley gets out, and as he’s standing there on the sidewalk he feels his phone vibrating in his pocket.
He pulls it out and looks at the display.
Vaughan.
He’s been expecting this. They went over the statement very briefly last night and everything was in order, but it was a business call and neither of them made any reference whatsoever to the significance of what was being set in train here. Howley is no sentimentalist, but he has a strong sense of occasion and would like to see this particular one marked in some way.
Or at the very least acknowledged.
He understands that Vaughan probably has mixed feelings, as well as a degree of trepidation about the publicity side of things-but on that score, just as Howley predicted, all eyes this morning are on Orchard Street.
On this Lizzie Bishop.
Whose fifteen-minute allotment of fame, as far as Vaughan is concerned, has come at just the right time.
Glancing around at sunny Madison Avenue, Howley raises the phone to his ear. “Jimmy?”
“Craig, how are you? Listen, meant to say last night, I’m thinking of heading out of town for a while, give you a little breathing space.”
“No, no, Jimmy, come on, that’s not necessary, you don’t have to-”
“No, I don’t. But I might anyway. Spend a little time at the house in Palm Beach. Relax, do a bit of sailing-”
Sailing?
“-play some golf. That’d be the real reason, if you want to know the truth.”
“Would you…” Howley doesn’t know how to phrase this. The Jimmy Vaughan he saw earlier in the week was a very sick man. “Would you…”
“Would I be able to, you mean? Well, listen, this new medication I’m on-the one I told you about, that the boys at Eiben are working on?-it’s amazing. It’s finally kicking in, and I actually feel pretty good for a change.”
“Holy shit, Jimmy.” Howley isn’t sure what to make of this. But one thing does occur to him. The boys at Eiben? Isn’t that a little weird? Given the history, given-
Then he sees Dave Fishman, Oberon’s director of corporate affairs, coming through the hotel’s revolving doors, and he gets distracted. “Er… that’s great, it really is…”
“Don’t worry, Craig,” Vaughan says. “I’m still going to die.”
“Jesus, Jimmy.”
“No, I just mean I mightn’t have such a miserable time doing it.”
As Fishman approaches, eyebrows raised, pointing at his watch, Howley feels a flicker of panic, of uncertainty. It’s as though he has lost his bearings all of a sudden. “Er, listen, Jimmy,” he says, “I have to-”
“Go, go, you’re fine.” That was whispered. But what Vaughan says next is much louder. “You know what, I might just stick around. This could be interesting.”
“Good… yeah, okay.”
“And Craig?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t fuck this up on me, you hear?”
It’s nearly one o’clock, and Frank has an uneasy sense that something is under way. But he has no idea what it is and no one will talk to him.
There’s a lot of coming and going, a lot of huddled, urgent-looking conversations taking place between busy, important-looking people.
He keeps glancing around to see if he can spot that detective he spoke to a few times during the night. What was his name? Lenny Byron. There was a man you could deal with-open, direct, reluctant to just peddle any old line from the department.
But Detective Byron doesn’t seem to be here anymore.
It’s not that no one will talk to Frank-there are liaison officers and trauma counselors and all kinds of spokespeople available and willing to talk to him, but what they really are is a sort of buffer zone.
Right now he wants to talk to the important-looking people.
Because he has his suspicions.
Gleaned from various conversations and from things he’s overheard.