“Oh,” she says. “I’ll leave those for the rest of you to enjoy.” And with this, she walks out of their bedroom, shutting the door quietly behind her.
PATRICK
Jennifer and the boys get into a taxi headed to Logan Airport, and Patrick watches them from the second-floor picture window, peering around the thirteen-foot Christmas tree, which took Jen and her assistant, Penelope, five hours to decorate with three thousand ornaments and 650 white lights.
Jen did not take the news well. There were forty minutes of screaming into a pillow, forty minutes of muffled sobbing on the phone to her mother (Patrick desperately trying to hear how much she was giving away), and then thirty minutes in a scalding-hot shower before Jen emerged with the news that she was taking the boys to San Francisco for Christmas, even though it’s their year to go to Nantucket.
Patrick is mute. He deserves at least this. He tries not to think about the cost of four last-minute plane tickets to the West Coast on the twenty-third of December, or about the bill for the hot water. Such things have never bothered him before because he makes a tremendous amount of money running the private-equity division of Everlast Investments. But now, Patrick has a sick, sick feeling that the well is about to dry up.
He was careful about how he worded things with Jen, although his appearing at the house at eleven o’clock in the morning pretty much said it all. To make matters worse, she thought for an instant that he had taken off from work early so he could go Christmas shopping, or so they could go for a couple’s massage before the Everlast Christmas party that evening.
He said, We’re not going to the Christmas party.
He then explained that he has been placed on a “leave of absence” until after the first of the year, and that his boss, Gary Grimstead, who is a great guy, asked him not to come to the Everlast Investments holiday party.
Because Patrick is under investigation by Everlast’s Compliance Department, and Gary thinks it’s best for Patrick to lie low until whatever they’re looking into blows over.
What are they looking into? Jen asked Patrick.
Patrick asked the same thing of Gary Grimstead, but, although Gary is truly a great guy, he tends to play his cards close to the chest, and he wouldn’t exactly say. Probably the perks, Gary said. Meaning the “gifts” from clients that Patrick has received in the past eighteen to twenty-four months: private jets to South Beach to golf, floor seats for the Celtics, front-row seats for Billy Joel, trips to Vegas with comped penthouse suites. Those he can feasibly explain away because he is hardly alone in the industry in accepting perks (although the trip to South Beach-a bachelor party for his deputy, Michael Bell-included three Playboy models, and he can’t have Jen finding out about that). But then, as he was walking out of Gary’s office, smarting from being uninvited to the Four Seasons that evening, he received a text message from an unidentified number that he knew belonged to the temporary cell phone of Bucky Larimer, his fraternity brother from Colgate. Back in September, Bucky had given Patrick key pieces of inside information about a leukemia drug called MDP. Bucky had assured Patrick that the drug was amazing and FDA approval was pending. A sure thing, Bucky told Patrick. It’s going to change not only leukemia but maybe cure all cancers, man. In the past three months, Patrick has invested over twenty-five million dollars of his clients’ money in Panagea, the company that makes MDP, and he invested money for Bucky Larimer as well, under the protection of Theta Chi Nominal Trust, named after their fraternity. Patrick is the trustee. It’s insider trading, and if Patrick gets caught, he is going to jail.
Patrick tells Jen that Compliance is probably going to slap him on the wrist for taking the perks but that they might find other things they don’t like.
Such as…? Jen asked.
He then told her about the leukemia drug, and about how he hedged his bets on it, which is why they call it a hedge fund. Then, because he can’t lie to Jen, he tells her that the way he invested the money wasn’t exactly legal, because he had privileged pieces of information, provided by someone he knows in the pharmaceutical industry.
He said, Really, honey, the less you know about the specifics, the better.
Which was when Jen flipped out. You might lose your job, she said. You might get in real trouble, Patrick. And think about the public humiliation.
She said this to get a reaction. Patrick is very proud of his good name.
He closed his eyes and shook his head, which Jen understood to be a dismissal of her and her concerns.
As the taxi disappears down Beacon Street, Patrick gazes across the Common. He can see the skaters on Frog Pond and all the twinkling lights in the trees. Diagonally across the Common is the Four Seasons, where Patrick will not be headed this evening. Gary Grimstead is probably picking out his cuff links right this second. In a little while, the Bristol Lounge will hold 150 Everlast employees, who will all be talking about one thing and one thing only.
Patrick Quinn, fingered by Compliance.
Patrick goes to the freezer and pulls out a frosted bottle of Triple 8 vodka; then he walks down the hallway, to the master suite. He has a prescription bottle containing thirteen Vicodin, left over from when he tweaked his back playing tackle football in the front yard of the Theta Chi house at his fifteen-year Colgate reunion, which was where the conversation with Bucky Larimer got going in the first place.
He goes back out into the living room and turns off all the lights except for those on the tree. The tree is beyond beautiful; it’s artwork. Jen likes glass balls set all the way back, nearly to the trunk of the tree, and then a second ornament placed midway on the bough, and then the best ornaments-the Christopher Radkos, and Jen’s favorites, a fancy fur-clad shopper and a dapper doorman by Soffieria De Carlini-on the ends of the branches, where everyone can appreciate them. In this way, the tree looks full and rich; the glass balls catch the light and the tree seems to glow from within.
Jennifer has serious talent as an interior designer. Their impeccably restored five-story townhouse on Beacon Street, with a roof garden from which they can view the Esplanade and the fireworks every Fourth of July, was just featured on the Beacon Hill Holiday House Tour, and won first place. Jennifer and her assistant, Penelope, garnered three new commissions-one of them a soup-to-nuts job on Mount Vernon Street, and one a renovation of a seven-thousand-square-foot house on Brattle Street in Cambridge, Julia Childs’s old neighborhood. Jennifer was swooning with her success, and Patrick, trying to be supportive of her burgeoning career, popped a bottle of Billecart-Salmon, then called the sitter and took her to dinner at Clio.
That, a mere ten days ago.
Today, the third-shortest day of the year, it is fully dark at four o’clock.
One shot of vodka, two Vikes. Patrick is still in his suit, but he takes his shoes off and reclines on the sofa.
He has left himself exposed. He is such an IDIOT!
He can’t stand to think about it, but he can’t think about anything else. If the stuff about MDP comes to light, he will be written about in the Globe and possibly the Wall Street Journal. Jennifer will lose her clients, and the boys will have to go to public school. Patrick will never get hired anywhere else in Boston. He isn’t the kind of person who has a “second act” in him; he is the kind of person who sets a path and then follows it. Except he deviated from the path, and now he will pay. They will have to sell the house and move… where? To Kansas City, where Patrick will manage the branch of a local bank? Would a local bank in Kansas even be able to hire him? The inside information and the subsequent investing might qualify as a felony. Possibly. He should get a lawyer, but that’s an admission of defeat, right?