But Lehman was alive enough. Gubner steered me toward a man who sat facing the window. I moved toward the table, feeling edgy. This seemed the wrong place to be doing our business. Lehman’s back conveyed queasiness like a contagion.
I reached the table and stood over him. My imagined Alexander Lehman was tall and slender. The real one was short and pale, with brown hair and the boyish roundness of a child comic.
“Mr. Lehman?”
“You’re Mr. Paget.” He said it with the sad expectancy of a man who had been formally introduced to a terminal disease. “Please sit down.” The voice went with the face; it had the youthfulness of an adolescent’s. But at second glance there was something older in him, like seeing your paperboy grown up and disappointed. His eyes were a sad light blue which looked as though they had the life bleached out. We sat down.
His eyes searched me, as if trying to learn whether I were really fatal. “Marty has explained my situation?”
“Generally. We’re both waiting to hear it from you.”
“I wish I shared your sense of anticipation.” Lehman seemed to be gliding elliptically around his problems. I waited. I noticed that he had long piano player’s fingers, which noiselessly drummed the table. They seemed constantly in motion, like nervous antennae feeling out his relation to the world.
“I don’t expect you to understand how I got involved in this,” he finally said.
“I can listen, Mr. Lehman.” I seemed to have been chosen as the one to whom Lehman would make his personal accounting. I was all wrong for the role; I was neither wife, friend, nor psychiatrist. It struck me that he was a lonely man.
“I knew what Lasko was doing when he hired me. That’s the worst part. I was in debt and my business had gone bust. I’d quit my old job and started a fast food chain in New Jersey that didn’t fly. Borrowed $10,000 from my wife’s parents. This was a couple of years ago. So, I was broke and out of a job. He found me through one of those executive placement deals. When I came to Boston, Lasko went through my finances with me. More even than my qualifications. Then he offered me the job. You can see how it worked out.” He stopped abruptly, like a man reaching a rest point in a grubby and unpleasant job.
I had a notion how it had worked out, but didn’t say so. I chose some neutral words. “I’d appreciate it if you would explain.”
Lehman looked both eager and reluctant, as if unsure whether he would be helped or humiliated. Gubner broke in softly. “Go ahead, Alec.”
Lehman nodded slowly. “My wife was afraid. Hell, I was afraid too. I was a middle-aged, broke business failure in a buyer’s market, with two kids.” His words picked up speed. “Lasko was pushing me to come to Boston. He even offered to loan me down-payment money and to guarantee my mortgage. And I owed my in-laws $10,000. Have you ever owed your in-laws money?”
“I’m not married.”
“Hell, I’d sooner owe money to the Mafia. They might kill you, but you don’t have to eat dinner with them.” He looked at me to see if his little joke had taken. I was beginning to get a handle on him. At the center of him were other people looking back. And now it was me.
“The thing about being dead, Mr. Lehman, is that there’s no future in it.”
His smile was bleak. “So I took it all. I took the job, which was better than I’d expected, and I moved to Boston. Then, I took the loan. Lasko kept pressuring me to get a good house, so I did. A nice old white frame house in Newton, with oaks in the front. My family loved it. And Lasko gave me the loan and set up the mortgage, and I was controller of Lasko Devices, with a house in Newton.” The sad face made it seem as attractive as acquiring leprosy. Lehman’s features were astonishingly mobile. I wondered if it came from practice.
A not-so-wild guess hit me. “Mr. Lehman, were you the one who called McGuire a week ago to talk about stock manipulation?”
He looked surprised. “No. What manipulation?”
It was my turn for surprise. But Lehman hadn’t finished his confessional. “The thing is, I knew why Lasko wanted me. I used to be a CPA with a national accounting firm. You learn pretty fast to figure out your clients. I knew Lasko wanted someone that he owned, that sooner or later I would do something I didn’t like. But I had bought into the whole thing a long time ago. The house, the job, all the expectations. All the deferred gratifications.”
“And when it didn’t work, you folded up.” I said it quietly, looking at him.
He stared at the table. “There wasn’t enough in me. You know, I knew that I was a born lackey.” The voice had gone starkly bitter. “In college I was the class clown.” Gubner smiled faintly in rueful recollection. “Between then and now I must have kissed enough ass to fill a stadium. The one time I tried to get out from under myself is when I started my own business. I was going to be a boss. But I wasn’t cut out for being a boss. I kept looking for someone to please, for someone to tell me what to do. Or what to be.” He paused, then pronounced judgment on himself in a final tone. “And that’s the bottom line on me, Mr. Paget. I’m someone else’s boy.”
And now he was my boy. The thought must have shown in my face. “What do they call you, Mr. Paget?”
“Chris.”
“Tell me, Chris, have you ever wanted to please someone else, even when you thought it was wrong?”
“More often than I’d like.”
“What keeps you from doing it?”
I thought. “I honestly don’t know, Mr. Lehman. I guess I’m afraid to.”
Lehman nodded; he knew what I meant. For a moment, we were almost friends. But he was a witness, and I needed to use him. I decided to put a cap on self-analysis. “Let’s just say that I understand what you’ve told me.”
But Lehman was looking beyond me at some middle distance. The bar reverberated with the echo of a long-ago psychic explosion, of which the current Lehman was the remains, a crazy quilt of roles with no stuffing. The act of contrition was the only thing which was making Lehman real to himself. But I was going to have to push it to the end.
“Let’s talk about what you’ve got for me,” I said.
Lehman snapped to as if wrenched out of hypnosis. “I don’t know about any manipulation. But I’ve got proof of something different. A lot worse.” Whatever it was lent an awed tone to his words. “I’ve got a memo at home that will deliver the whole thing.” He looked around. “But we can’t talk about it here.”
I felt impatient. “Look, you’ve got to tell me sometime.”
Lehman’s voice was thick with knowledge. “Mr. Paget, you don’t want to talk about this here either. I know I’m doing a mental striptease. But I didn’t want to sit in a government office, like a criminal. You’ve been very decent. Come to my place after dinner tonight, and I’ll show you what I’ve got. You can handle it the way you think best.” His voice slowed to a low, emphatic rhythm. “And you are going to want to think about it.”
It was a strange scene and sad. The man had wanted to see me-be friends-before he put his future in my hands. But I couldn’t give him that. “You know, Mr. Lehman, I can question you, under oath, any time. And have you sent up for perjury if you lie.”
Gubner cut in sharply. “He knows that.” I looked from Gubner to Lehman. He nodded.
“All right, Mr. Lehman, 7:30 tonight. And I hope it’s good.”
Lehman stood up, smiling in a lifeless way which made my words sound foolish. “It’s better than you imagine. Or from my perspective, worse.” He paused. “You should remember, Mr. Paget, that Lasko is a very ruthless man.”
He should know, I thought. But Lehman seemed like a weak reed for Lasko to be trusting. “One thing bothers me. Just why does Lasko trust you with whatever this is?”
The bleak smile held. “Because I’m his controller,” he said with irony. “Besides, he’s got me by the balls.”
I could see that. “Then why are you here?”
He exhaled, staring at his feet. Then he looked directly at me. “Because this is my last chance to like myself.”
I nodded. He turned to Gubner. The two friends looked at each other for a moment. Gubner wore the rueful half-smile. Lehman saw it and reached out with one hand to touch Gubner’s arm. Then he turned and walked from the bar. Gubner stared after him, as if regret had turned him to stone.