City of Dreams (50 page)

In the fourteen months since she had come to work at Magee & Magee, this was the first time that he had asked her to sit in his office after hours. He hung up the phone and ran his hands over the widow’s peak that was already receding, even though he wasn’t yet forty and hadn’t been married so he couldn’t be a widower. “That client has lived for twenty years on the trust that his father established. He has no worries.”

“You gave him good advice, sir.” She perched on a chair and remembered what her mother had told her: always say something positive to start a conversation. “I was impressed with your words this morning, too.”

“It’s been such a day, I don’t remember what I said this morning.”

“About how this firm represents stability.”

Owen T. Magee smiled. “Well, it does. People wonder why we stay in the Flatiron, why we aren’t uptown someplace like the Chrysler Building, or downtown in the World Trade Center. And behind our back, they always say it’s because we’re cheap and this is a low-rent neighborhood. But we’ve always been here. It’s a . . . a—”

“—tradition?”

“It’s more than tradition. It’s an identity.”

“I can see what you mean.”

He studied her a moment and said, “Are you free this evening, Miss Wilson?”

And the questions shot through her mind: Is my boss hitting on me? Is this a test? How should I play it? Coy? Disinterested? Direct and blunt because he looks like Nixon, which I would list as my biggest turnoff if I ever filled out a
Playboy
questionnaire?

“It’s business, Miss Wilson. Drinks at ‘21’ with a client and his broker.”

Drinks at “21
.” She had been waiting ever since she got to New York for someone—anyone—to say those words to her.

Her mind filled with names and images, real and fictional, and all alive to anyone who loved New York . . . Nick and Nora downing martinis at the bar . . . Roger Thornhill—Cary Grant—planning to meet his mother for dinner . . . Walter Winchell getting the latest from J. Edgar Hoover . . . Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe avoiding the cameras . . . Jennifer Wilson and . . . Owen T. Magee? It was not how she would write it in her future autobiography, but it would have to do. She went into her office and put on her heels.

T
HE CAB PULLED
up in front of the brownstone at 21 West Fifty-second Street. Two dozen lawn jockeys offered their hands from the wrought-iron railings around the entrance. A few were as black as the lawn jockeys of Ohio, but most were white. . . . New York lawn jockeys, she thought, so some of them would be Irish and Italian and Jewish, a whole United Nations of lawn jockeys.

She was so taken by the sight of them that she did not notice how completely, ineffably, almost frighteningly quiet the street was on the night of the day that the networks were already calling Black Monday.

Owen T. led her through the empty cocktail lounge, into the famous Bar Room.

Jennifer had expected that the place would be jumping. It was “21”, after all. But it felt as if America had a lost a war. The few people dining at the checkered tablecloths and the five people drinking at the bar all seemed to be spending their last pennies on pleasure before the enemy came to overturn the tables and smash the liquor bottles.

One of the men at the bar popped up when he saw Magee.

Jennifer’s first thought was that he was the handsomest man she had ever seen. Dark hair combed straight back and curling at the collar, a double-breasted blue suit, yellow tie, Rolex flashing: Austin Arsenault.

Magee had filled her in on the cab ride. Arsenault had left an old-line brokerage in 1980 to begin his own firm, specializing in start-ups and technology. Since his family had long done business with Magee & Magee, he had come to them for legal advice and clients, and now, one hand washed the other.

The man sitting with Arsenault, an overweight ophthalmologist named Gary Smith, looked a generation older and acted a generation more depressed, as if he understood how bad this crash really was. Magee had explained that after eyeballs, Dr. Smith’s passion was cannonballs. He was chairman of the New York Museum of Revolutionary War Weapons in Westchester. Since he was a good client of Avid Investment Strategies
and
Magee & Magee, Austin and Owen both met him for drinks on the third Monday of every other month, no matter what kind of Monday it was.

As Magee approached with his assistant, Arsenault extended his hand. “Owen T., come to put a brave face on I see?”

Magee looked around at the empty room. “Unlike the rest of New York.”

“So we’re either the bravest men in town, or the biggest fools.”

Jennifer liked this talk. She felt that she was sitting right at the center of the New York action with two men who knew enough to laugh at the darkness.

So she laughed, too. And as she shook hands with Arsenault, she checked for a wedding band:
single
. But a bit of tan line around his finger. So maybe he was lying.

She ordered a Chablis and watched two masters work. Arsenault and Magee first calmed Dr. Smith about his investments, then about the assets of his little museum.

Smith said, “I’m also worried about the clients I’ve sent you, Austin.”

“Don’t worry about them,” said Arsenault. “They know that I’m all about the new technology. Technology will lead us out of this mess. Now”—Arsenault drained his drink and called for another—“I’d like you to show Owen T. that bond you’ve brought.”

Dr. Smith pulled an envelope from his pocket and removed a piece of paper, about half the size of a dollar bill. “In addition to weapons at the museum, we have primary source materials relating to the Revolution. This”—he placed it on the table—“is a New Emission Bond.”

“And this”—Owen T. Magee nodded to Jennifer—“is my expert in such bonds.”

She was?
Jennifer looked at Magee and saw the wink. So . . . yes,
she was
. She raised her glass to Dr. Smith and took a sip of her Chablis.

Dr. Smith looked her over. “Very pretty, but she seems young to be an expert in anything—”

“Sometimes, the youngest and prettiest are the smartest,” said Arsenault.

There was a line to make a girl cringe. But it didn’t. She hoped she wasn’t blushing. She said, “I’m sure Dr. Smith is interested in ‘the smartest.’” Be professional. Stay smooth. That’s what her mother always told her.

Dr. Smith must have agreed because he pressed ahead. “I hate to sell something out of our collection, but our endowment took a terrible hit today. Terrible. And it wasn’t much of an endowment to begin with.”

“Don’t panic,” said Owen T. Magee. “That’s been our counsel to all our clients.”

“Ours, too,” said Arsenault.

“I’m not panicking,” answered Smith. “But we have two of these bonds. And I’m wondering about them. What does this smart young lady think?”

Owen T. Magee laughed. “You wouldn’t want to force her to give an opinion until she had worked with the material.”

The old doctor put a hand on her arm. “If these bonds were valid, my museum would be safe from any crash. They’d give us all the operating capital we’d ever need.”

“There you go.” Owen T. Magee patted Dr. Smith on the back. “Money doing what it’s supposed to, generating more money to make society a better place.”

“Well said,” added Arsenault. “And if she can’t redeem the bond, I’ll buy it as a collectible . . . assuming that we have any money left in the morning.”

No one laughed at the joke.

O
WEN
T. M
AGEE
insisted that Jennifer cab it home with him. “Nobody in my firm does after-hours work like that and takes the subway. New York is a dangerous place.”

So they sped down Fifth Avenue, through a city that had gone quiet, shocked.

Magee looked out the window and shook is head. “Five hundred points. No wonder the old doctor is worried. I’m worried. So is Arsenault.”

Jennifer didn’t like that. If they were worried, how should
she
feel? So she changed the subject. “What am I supposed to do with these bonds?”

“Whatever you want. You are now a ‘minder.’”

“A ‘minder’?”

Owen T. Magee leaned a bit closer.

If she had felt an impulse to distrust him earlier, she did not feel it now. He had been a gentleman all through dinner. And she was feeling more relaxed in his presence. Perhaps it was his manner . . . or the wine. She didn’t even think it strange that he had insisted on riding downtown with her though he lived on the Upper East Side.

He said, “Haven’t you ever heard the expression, ‘Find ’em, mind ’em, and grind ’em’?”

She shook her head.

“What do they teach in law school these days?”

She gave a little shrug. “I—”

“It’s what we do in estate law. We find clients through other clients or feeders like Arsenault. We mind ’em by writing wills, drafting trusts to fulfill their wishes, stroking them when they’re worried, satisfying them when they’re discontent. Then, we grind ’em with fees, adjustments, revisions, and responses to the regular changes in the tax code, a whole range of legitimate expenses that protect their estates and our lifestyles. And tonight”—he flashed that nervous Nixonian smile—“you became a minder.”

“You want me to mind Dr. Smith?”

“I want you to make him think that we’re fulfilling his every wish. That means taking seriously the silly notion that a bond from 1780 may still have redemption value.”

The cab pulled up in front of her apartment on Bethune Street.

He licked his lips and looked at hers.

She had been here before. She had kissed her share of men, often just like this, in the back of a cab, and it almost always began with the “lip looks.”

But he was not so bold, or perhaps not so interested. He said, “You know, I’ve been watching you since your first firm interview. I made sure you had a callback.”

“I appreciate that, sir. I love the law, and I love the idea of all that can be done in a practice like this.” That was not entirely true. She had taken the job at Magee & Magee because it was the best opening if she wanted to stay in New York.

Another long look from him had her wondering if the kiss was coming. But no.

He said, “Prepare a report on this bond. Good night, Miss Minder.”

M
ISS
M
INDER
. S
HE
liked it.

If one good thing came from Black Monday, it would be her new job as a minder.

By noon the next day, she had familiarized herself with the history of the 1780 bonds and the reasons they were sold, redeemed, or denied. She ate lunch at her desk and waded into Hamilton’s
Report on Public Credit
.

It was good to be in the eighteenth century, she thought, to be involved in the problems of the impoverished and debt-ridden United States, because it gave her some perspective on a day that the Dow was gyrating like a sixties go-go dancer, opening up two hundred, giving it all back by twelve thirty, then recovering a hundred and fifty points in half an hour.

By three thirty, it had gone down again and up again, but Jennifer Wilson didn’t notice, because she and Alexander Hamilton were deep in conversation across the centuries, as only a reader and writer can be. Hamilton was telling her that the words on the back of the bonds, “engage the absolute promise of the United States for the payment of interest indefinitely, for the United States are bound to pay the interest perpetually till the principal is discharged.”

And if a girl had Alexander Hamilton on her side, what should she fear?

At five o’clock, she went into Magee’s office. Like everyone else in the firm, Owen T. was in a much better mood. The Dow had closed up by a hundred points. The world was not coming to an end. No meteor was streaking toward Wall Street, about to wipe out life as they all knew it.

She told him her plan to test the United States Treasury. If she succeeded, the two bonds held by the New York Museum of the American Revolution were worth, at five percent per annum, over two million each.

He rubbed his hands together and said, “A wild-goose chase. Nothing I love more than a client’s wild-goose chase, because even if we don’t catch the goose, the client pays. And if we do . . . the client still pays.”

B
Y
F
RIDAY’S OPENING
, the Dow had recovered half of Monday’s losses. Whatever had happened was beginning to look like a blip in the trend since 1982, when Reagan’s policies and the business cycle took hold and the Dow began its rise from the 700s to near 2,400.

Jennifer Wilson traveled downtown for her first big on-her-own meeting.

To get in the mood, she ate breakfast in Fraunces Tavern and imagined the ghost of Hamilton in one of the upper rooms, churning out his enormous work in five months. Then she walked a few blocks north to the Federal Reserve Bank. It had been built to resemble a Florentine palace, a monument to the solidity of American finance. And as proof to the doubtful, the bank offered daily tours into the New York bedrock itself, where the vault held the largest store of monetary gold on earth. But Jennifer had an appointment on an upper floor, with a vice president in the Financial Services Group.

His name was Edgar Meadows. He wore a bow tie. He looked annoyed.

“Thank you for seeing me,” she said.

Meadows glanced at his watch. “I have fifteen minutes. I don’t know what could be so important that you couldn’t simply speak to one of our clerks.”

Jennifer Wilson withdrew a copy of one of the bonds from her briefcase and placed it on the desk. “My client has two of these, all properly signed and executed.”

“Really?” Meadows inclined his eyes but not his head. “And what would you like us to do with them?”

“Why . . . redeem them, of course.”

Meadows flicked his eyes back to Jennifer. “Is your client crazy, or are you?”

Jennifer Wilson offered the slightest smile. She had rehearsed all of her facial expressions and thought she delivered that one perfectly. “We believe that the bonds are legal tender.”

“These bonds matured in 1785.”