Talcott cleared his throat before suddenly leaning down to rummage under his desk. I felt my fingers gripping the sides of the chair-was he going for a gun?
My nerves quieted when I saw what Talcott was reaching for a bottle of Glenfiddich single malt, aged twentyone years. Slightly less dangerous than a gun, though from the shaking of his hands my guess was that after we left, Talcott would drink enough to make him sleep like he’d been shot.
He brought up a small tumbler, filled it to the brim, and downed it, closing his eyes. He looked at us, slight embarrassment on his face. Then he pushed the bottle toward us.
“No thanks,” I said. “I didn’t have breakfast.”
Jack looked right past the bottle. I watched his reaction, but there was none.
Talcott coughed into his fist. His eyes were a little watery. I got the feeling he didn’t particularly enjoy the scotch, but needed it enough to get around that small detail.
“You don’t know what it’s like out there,” he said.
“Out where?” said Jack. “What are you talking about?”
“The economy is in the toilet. The dollar is barely worth the paper it’s printed on.”
“I cash my paychecks,” I added. “We know this.”
“But companies…they’re getting hit the hardest. There aren’t as many customers to go around, and the customers that they do have, well the money they pay doesn’t buy what it used to.”
“What’s your point?”
“Sixteen-twenty Avenue of the Americas, we’ve lost a dozen tenants from that building in the last two years.
Two years! And you know how many tenants have moved in? One. That’s a few hundred grand that we used to be making that just disappeared in the wind.”
Talcott paused, eyed the bottle.
“We needed the extra money.”
“And…” I said.
“That company…718 Enterprises…they never leased the property,” Talcott said. “They were never officially on our ledger. They never paid us a dime.”
“Then why did you say…” I replied, but Jack cut me off.
“So what does that mean?” Jack said. “They didn’t pay for the space? How did you bring in money?”
“The company itself didn’t pay us,” he replied, eyes looking at the bottle like it was a well-aged steak. “There was a law firm.”
“Kaiser, Hirschtritt and Certilman,” I said. “They occupied the floor above.”
Talcott nodded, his eyes red. He bit his lower lip. Hard.
“Go on,” Jack said.
“The law firm leased one floor. Eighteen. About a year after they leased it, our tenants on seventeen moved out.
We needed money bad. So when Brett Kaiser came to us and made a proposition, we had no choice. The tenant that occupied that floor had left three months earlier. We couldn’t afford to take another hit without recouping some of our losses.”
“What was the offer?” I said.
“Somebody would occupy the seventeenth floor. Only for legal purposes, the firm would be listed as the leaser.
They would take care of monthly payments for both floors. That was that. We treated it like a tenant was simply occupying two floors.”
“So who was on seventeen?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Talcott said. “That was part of Kaiser’s deal. He said the people on seventeen would never need anything from Orchid, and we should never ever contact
them for any reason. I never went to that floor, and they never even hired a cleaning crew as far as I know. One time, though, one of our maid services told me she accidentally got off on the wrong floor, got lost. She said the offices were closed, and had some sort of security system she’d never seen before. Like something out of the space program, she said.”
“Doesn’t sound like something a law office would employ,” I said to Jack. He didn’t respond.
“There’s something wrong with that company. I don’t know what it is, but I had a feeling that some day somebody would ask me these questions. I never wanted to know what they did. But I had to lease as much space as possible or the building could have gone under.”
“I’m sure Kaiser knew that,” I said. “And knew you wouldn’t ask questions as long as the checks arrived on time.”
“I never needed to or wanted to ask questions,” Talcott said. “There are plenty of tenants whose businesses I’m not fully acquainted with. As long as they’re running a legal operation and paying on time, they have their right to privacy.”
“And you have a right to know where your money is coming from,” I said.
“What if,” Jack said, “you had a choice between getting paid and having a tenant running a legal operation?”
“I’ve never had to make that choice.”
“Never had to, or never wanted to think you had to,”
Jack replied.
Talcott said nothing, but that bottle of scotch was practically gravitating toward his hands.
“One more thing,” Jack said. “Do you have contact information for Brett Kaiser?”
“Sure,” Talcott said. “Cell phone, home phone and e-mail address. Will that be all?”
“Just the contact info,” Jack said. “And if there’s anything else you can think of, here’s my card.”
Jack handed it to him. Talcott stared at it like it might spontaneously burst into flame, then pocketed it.
“Not a problem.” Talcott took a piece of letterhead from his printer and scribbled the information on it. His handwriting was sloppy and careless. My guess was that
Iris was responsible for his “personal” notes.
When he finished, Talcott folded the page and inserted it into an Orchid Realty envelope. Jack took it and stuffed it inside his jacket pocket.
“Pleasure meeting you,” Jack said, pointing at the bottle of liquor. “Now we’ll leave you two alone.”
Morgan Isaacs kept one hand on his BlackBerry, which was nestled snugly inside his front pants pocket. To anyone on the street it looked like he might be playing a game of pocket pool, but this Chester guy was ten minutes late and Morgan didn’t want to miss a phone call. He considered leaving. I mean, who in the hell meets about a job on the street? And Morgan didn’t like to wait. In his previous job, people waited for him. He shared a secretary, a cute piece of ass named Charlotte he could have had at any moment. Sometimes he would send her out for coffee just because he could. When she came back, he wouldn’t even thank her, just go into his office, pour the cup into the bottom of his fake plant, and pull out a can of Red Bull.
But this guy was late. Just a few short months ago,
Morgan wouldn’t wait for anybody. Some asshole wanted him to wait five minutes? Screw you, let’s reschedule.
Now, Morgan didn’t know when he’d even find work again. And with bills piling up he needed to earn scratch no matter what the cost. So if he had to suck up his pride for a little while, so be it. A necessary evil. And whoever this jack-off was who had him wait, well, if the company was good enough, Morgan would be running it within a few years anyway. Then he’d be the one making people late.
He felt a sense of anger rise within him as he watched hundreds of people walking down the streets, oblivious to him, unknowing and uncaring of what he’d been through. Men, women, dressed in natty suits with the finest accoutrements, they had no idea that in the time it took to snap your fingers they could be out of a job just like him. They had no right to be so confident, so careless, while Morgan stood there, his immediate future resting in the hands of a recommendation of Ken Tsang and the charity of some guy he’d never met before.
In the cab ride over-he would have preferred the bus to save money, but Chester didn’t give him a whole lot of time-Morgan wondered whether or not he’d take the position if one was offered. Then he chided himself. Now was not the time to be prideful. The bills would continue to come, the debt would continue to mount. Even a modest income would provide a stint for the bleeding, and at least he would have health care. Time to suck it up for a few months, Morgan had told himself. Guys with his talent and drive didn’t grow on trees. And every bumpy road led to riches down the line.