I looked at my watch. Twenty-five after eleven. "If you have to get this building sold by midnight, I'd say that Mr. Rainey is the one who's being accommodating."
Gerzon turned to Jay. "Should we discuss who is accommodating whom? I told you, midnight or no deal."
The title man, Barrett, professionally alert to lawyerly tones, interrupted. "Hey listen, if there's not going be a deal, then tell me now, because I could be-"
"It's all right," Jay said. "We're okay. Let's just be cool here." He looked at me, raised his eyebrows to tell me to relax. "There's a lot of expertise at the table. We'll hammer any problem out and get it done."
Gerzon produced copies of the contract and unfolded an oversized pair of tortoiseshell glasses. He seemed to be the kind of man who was acquainted with people everywhere, pointedly remembering the details of their lives, but who himself was genuinely known by almost no one, except perhaps by a former wife or the people who had sued him with righteousness. "What is it?" he asked, uneasy with my attention.
"Is real estate your primary practice?"
"Oh, no, no," said Gerzon. "I'm involved in a variety of endeavors." He smiled in such a way that I was to infer that the transaction at hand was a trifle, that larger matters awaited his attention, nine-digit wire transfers from foreign banks, dozens of important phone calls, imminent IPOs- a cyclone of gold and greatness.
Barrett handed around copies of the title report on the oceanfront land. Gerzon turned his attention to it, but I have seen hundreds of lawyers read thousands of documents and if they are reading, actually reading, even under pressurized circumstances, a stillness comes over them, the energies of their personality dropping onto the document at hand. Gerzon wasn't reading. His blink rate wasn't right. He was faking it, and this meant, I suspected, that he felt very good indeed about the deal.
"You have a card?" I said.
He looked up. "Yes, of course." He slipped one from out of a gold case and handed it to me. "You?"
"I don't have any new ones currently printed," I replied.
"Ah," he said, pointedly asking no more.
I fingered his card. It had two addresses, both telling. The first was on lower Fifth Avenue, where the old buildings are chopped up into small offices on the top floors, full of marginal businesses. Someone from out of town might think it was a prestigious address, but those in the city would know better. The second address specified one of Long Island's uncountable small office complexes. I've been to these places. The offices aren't particularly plush, all rent-a-painting decor and wall-to-wall carpeting. The secretaries are young, mean, and well compensated. The lawyers, usually local boys, some of whom have done stints in the city, prefer to handle cases that involve real estate transactions or estate work- generally simple procedures that guarantee a prompt fee. Eviction, tenant-complaint, pro bono work, constitutional defenses of immigrants and minorities, slip-and-fall work, etc., are strictly avoided. In this world the real estate men know the lawyers and the lawyers know the title people, who know the bankers, who are all known by the big-time contractors, who themselves maintain clear, constant, and affectionate relations with the politically appointed members of the county water authority as well as the elected members of the town board, who approve zoning changes and code exemptions. In sum, the second address on Gerzon's card conjured a long-settled, wealthy suburban civilization whose foremost institutions had achieved world-class standing in only certain areas of human endeavor: the luxury-car tune-up, the nerve-sparing removal of the prostate gland; the emergency resodding of a lawn. He probably lived there.
"So, gentlemen," I began, my voice slipping into tones I hadn't used in several years, "we have a deal value of three million dollars. It's a property swap, with four hundred thousand dollars going to Mr. Rainey. Because of the cash outlay, we'll call Mr. Gerzon the buyer and we'll call Mr. Rainey the seller."
"Fine," said Gerzon.
"Who is paying the recording fees, the transfer taxes, the Suffolk County surcharges, the title search, any back taxes owed on either property, and whatever else I haven't been told about?"
"We are," said Gerzon.
I leaned over to Jay. "You negotiated this?"
"It came out of the price, man."
"So there's nothing left to negotiate?"
Both men shook their heads.
I turned to Jay. "You don't need me."
"Yes he does," said Gerzon. "He needs to have legal representation so he can't come back and say the contract was no good, that he didn't understand it."
"And he finds some joker in the back of a steakhouse who happens to have a law degree and that's all right with you?" But then I thought of something. I pointed at the copies of the contract. "Jay, you realize you haven't yet signed these?"
"Not yet," Jay said. He was, I saw, one of those big men who need to keep moving, unable to rest upon the details of such things as contracts, which require stillness and attention. Apparently he knew this about himself, for something in his hopeful glance suggested he was delivering himself into my hands.
"You realize you can still negotiate the price, I mean."
"No he fucking can't!" said Gerzon.
"Of course he can. Nothing's signed here. There is no price. He can walk out of here, go to the movies."
Gerzon looked at Rainey. "I said get a lawyer, not a junkyard dog."
"It's okay-" Jay began.
"We're covering all the fees, we're being totally accommodating," said Gerzon.
I didn't like him and I didn't like the situation but I pulled the chain on the small lamp on the table and slid the contract beneath it, trying to get a better sense of the deal. Jay was acquiring a six-story loft building in lower Manhattan at 162 Reade Street, not far from City Hall, where the streets run according to the obsolete logic of cow paths and farmers' lanes. When the World Trade Center went down, real estate values in the area got strange. Some people panicked over more terrorism or contamination by the chemical soup that wafted from the burning site and sold for nothing, while others stood firm. If I'd had even a day's notice, I'd have checked the city records downtown to see how long Gerzon's client had owned the property, what the cost-basis was. The building was being exchanged by one Voodoo LLC, a limited-liability company, for ownership of eighty-six acres of real estate on the North Fork of Long Island. Survey documents of the land parcel were attached to the proposed contract and showed a deep strip of land running almost half a mile along Long Island Sound.
I looked up at Gerzon. "You're dumping a marginal downtown property with unprofitable long-term leases and possibly contaminated by the World Trade Center disaster for a huge piece of oceanfront acreage," I told him. "My client is short on cash to cover his closing costs and you've squeezed him way down on the price as a result. You're coughing up four hundred thousand dollars, which is nothing, nothing at all!" I turned to Jay. "You understand that once you sign this contract-"
"Let's do the deal, Mr. Wyeth," growled Gerzon. "Let's do the damn deal and go home."
The waiter drifted past, nearly mistakable as a configuration of cigar smoke. Allison signaled him. "Guys," she announced nervously, "anyone want a late dinner, drink, dessert before we begin?"
Barrett laid his pink hands on the table and ordered the largest steak the place sold.
"Mr. Gerzon?"
"Nothing for me."
"Bill?"
"I'll have some of that chocolate cake."
Allison nodded at the waiter to induce action and then glanced at me, her face tense behind her smile. Something about Jay unnerved her, I thought, even though his big hand had already smoothed its way up the small of her back.
"Get me one of those cigars," he said to her, and when she did he inspected it for a moment, ran it under his nose, nodded his satisfaction, and slipped it into the breast pocket of his suit.