Fixers (41 page)

After I finished reading, I took a deep breath, got up and walked around the room, then sat down and reread Scaramouche’s letter, and then reread it again.

I was struck by the credence and impact he gives to memory. On Wall Street today, memory counts for nothing. Look how they skip from bubble to bubble. People die and take institutional memories with them into the tomb. STST as it was holds no present interest for anyone working there now, even less under Rosenweis than under Mankoff.

That’s what I think I admire most about Scaramouche. He reached an age where enough of his contemporaries had died off to permit him a revisionist, boastful version of his own life and accomplishments, to claim to have said this or done that without anyone left to challenge him. But as far as I know, he never did. If anyone ever looked in a mirror and saw himself plain, it was Scaramouche.

Well, now he’s one with the ages, asleep in Mammon’s bosom. A month or so ago, just about the time Scaramouche would have been writing me this farewell letter, a book was published called
STST: The Death of an Ethos
, all about how STST had degraded ethically over the years. I’d read a couple of reviews, considered buying it, decided I just didn’t care anymore. I sold my STST shares a long time ago. On the Street that’s the ultimate separation. Don’t look back. For a while, I was tempted to check the price daily, just to assure myself I hadn’t bailed out too early, but after a while my interest faded, then disappeared. Before hitting the sack, something impelled me to go to the laptop and look up STST. Closed Friday at $185. Just about where I came in.

The past two days have been consumed with meetings, last-minute shopping, and must-attend Christmas parties. One thing on top of another. It’s distracted me from thinking about Scaramouche, and I think I’ve recovered some emotional balance. I did call his daughter in Portland, and we had a nice conversation about her father. She sounds very pleasant; we agreed that if it seems our paths may cross, we’ll look each other up.

I did get to the bank and picked up the flash drives that contain my diary, but haven’t had a chance to go over it yet. Tomorrow the office is closed, and I’ll have time to read it at my leisure. Then I’ll FedEx it to Marina.

Today was the office party, lunch in a private room at Bar Boulud across from Lincoln Center. Everything was first class, and everyone seemed pleased with their bonus; the general jollification was gratifying; all went home happy. What with the business already on the books, and the topmost sector of the income distribution, where I do most of my work, never so flush, 2015 should be an even better year than 2014.

I called B when I got home. Thayer’s setting in nicely at Boca, although she’s going nuts: too many women in pearls and twinsets and men in pastel trousers with whales and frogs on them complaining about taxes. I can only imagine. Her current plan is to fly up here on New Year’s Eve, arriving around midday, and stay at my place until the 1st or 2nd, depending on when she’s expected at Camp David. That’ll give me plenty of time to get the ball rolling with Marina about the diary. I can hardly bear all the excitement.

Woke up feeling very resolute and on top of things. I had budgeted five to six hours today for rereading the diary, and that’s about how long it took, including a break for lunch and a bit of fresh air.

It’s odd to reread something you haven’t looked at in years. I fancy the diary shows me, on balance, to be a decent, patriotic, thoughtful American. That may sound immodest, and at odds with the facts, but there you have it. Sure, I pulled a fast one to get OG elected, but as disappointing as his presidency has been to many, I’m prepared to argue in my defense that he’s done a hell of a lot better than any of those he beat out in the race to the White House—both times, in the 2008 election I fixed and in the 2012 election I had nothing to do with.

I know I’m taking a risk. When Marina breaks the story, I’ll probably get hauled up before some Congressional committee, or worse. These are matters I need to discuss with Artie once Marina’s on board. It seems possible that my political fix with Orteig may not even be illegal anymore, thanks to Citizens United, and if anyone wants exact info on where the money came from, the best I can do will be to give them the names of the feeders I used, all of which are located in jurisdictions where Congressional and other subpoenas have no standing. In any event, I expect Artie can negotiate immunity for me.

At the end of the day, here’s the big question. The way the country is now, will this make the difference I think it might? The way the media work now, would even Watergate have stirred up the ruckus it did back in 1973? Earlier this year, the Federal Reserve released the record of its 2008 bailout deliberations, which you’d think would be a HUGE Wall Street story. And so it proved—for about ten minutes and one news cycle as everybody in the media
hollered and danced about until they came to see that there was really nothing new there, certainly nothing like what I’ve recorded, what I was present at, what I heard and saw; nothing like the deals I cut. Nothing truly scandalous: just a bunch of buffoons making bad calls liberally sprinkled with favoritism.

After I finished reading, I took a walk around the block to clear my head and solidify my decision. When I got back, I took a few deep breaths and called Marina’s cell phone.

Needless to say, she was surprised to hear from me. “Chauncey! What a pleasant surprise. Are you calling to wish me a happy Christmas?”

“Actually, I’m calling about a Christmas present I have for you.” I thought of adding something like “the best present any journalist ever received from anyone,” but held back.

“How sweet. I hope it’s Ted Cruz’s head. That’s really all I want for my stocking.”

“Alas, no—but it’s still something I’m sure you’re going to like. It’s important that you get it ASAP. Where should I send it? I’m guessing you’re out of town.”

“You guess correctly. Actually, I’m in the Atlanta airport waiting to change planes. You say I need to get it ASAP.”

“Before it spoils? Oh, goody—I hope it’s caviar.”

“My lips are sealed. Where should I send it?”

“I’ll be back in New York Sunday afternoon. Can it wait until then?”

That didn’t fit my psychological schedule
at all
. What does Macbeth say? “If ’twere done when ’tis done, ’twere well it were done quickly”? But I quickly got a grip, realizing the timing of this is entirely in our hands, Marina’s and mine. There’s no risk of anyone scooping us on this. I’m the one with all the cards.

“Sounds good. I’ll drop it off at your place around lunchtime Sunday.”

“Wonderful. I can’t wait. How’s our darling B?”

“In Florida getting her father settled. She’s flying up on New Year’s Eve.” I didn’t say anything about Camp David; that’s B’s affair; if she chooses to tell Marina about it, fine. I reconfirmed her address in the Flatiron District for the Sunday drop-off.

By 6:00 p.m., everything was in order. I went out to look in on some friends’ annual Christmas Eve buffet over on Horatio Street but now I’m home. It’s getting on for 10:30 p.m. I’ve briefly considered going to St. Thomas on Fifth Avenue for its famous midnight service. It’s the church with the best music in the city, and the Christmas Eve service is conducted lovingly and reverently. I used to go with my father. He wasn’t a religious type, but the beauty and the elegance of this particular occasion were irresistible to him. He even put on white tie, which people of his sort called “evening clothes” back then.

I decided instead to stay home and do what I’ve often done on Christmas Eve: watch a DVD of
A Christmas Carol
, starring Alastair Sim as Scrooge.

So here we are. The DVD player’s cranked up, and the whiskey bottle’s out. I feel the way I did all that time ago when Mankoff and I parted after that first meeting at Three Guys: on the brink of a huge adventure. Where this new stage will take me I can’t yet know, but I’ve done all my homework, gotten everything organized. Funny, isn’t it, how what goes around comes around. In February 2007, Mankoff had sent me off with his checkbook to put OG in the White House. Today—going on eight years later—I’m considering using the record of that mission to expel that same man from 1600 Pennsylvania.

So there it is: nothing left for the moment, then, but to bid you a merry Christmas, and God bless us, every one!

Call me Ebenezer Suydam.

Probably it’s all Dickens’s fault. And Alastair Sim’s. And that last whiskey before turning in a bit before 1:00 a.m.

During the night, dreams came to me, and although they’ve since faded and fallen apart, they were hard to shake at first, they’d been so real. I vaguely remember something about Marjorie leading me somewhere, and Scaramouche—or was it my prep school squash coach?—along with flashes of my father and other vague figures and situations—jumbled and fragmentary, as if a church window had been shattered by a stone. And mixed up in all those scenes and images was the closing shot from
Three Days of the Condor
, when the Robert Redford character—except that I seem to recall it was me in the dream—is shown outside the old
New York Times
building, obviously getting ready to blow the whistle on the CIA.

I made myself a full and fulfilling breakfast, showered, shaved and got dressed. Took a call from a client at Lyford Cay (for some people, Mammon never takes a holiday) who wanted my estimate of how big an endowment gift to her alma mater would be required to produce an honorary degree. I told her $8 to $10 million ought to suffice. Could I get it done by the end of the year? I thought so—and would call her lawyer first thing tomorrow. Took another call from another old acquaintance, one of those rare college friendships still lively after thirty years, even though we see each other once a month at most, to make plans for our annual Christmas Day movie followed by dinner in Chinatown with enough friends to eat our way through a wide sampling of dishes. We decided there’s nothing we really want to see this year, so it’ll just be dinner. I’ll meet him and the gang at Dumpling Circus on Mott Street at 6:30.

After sending out a bunch of “belated merry Christmas” e-mails, I called B in Florida, figuring this would be a good time to catch her, but my call went straight to her voicemail. Finally I turned to the business I dislike most about Christmas: opening presents. I’m a giver, not a taker—if you haven’t already guessed. It was the usual mixed bag. Three copies of a book titled
Capital in the Twenty-First Century
, by a French economist with the funny name of Piketty who purports to have a logical explanation of why the 1 percent have ended up with everything. When the book came out early this year I read about a hundred reviews and have no need to parse the tome itself—but it’ll look good on the office bookshelf.

There were a half-dozen bottles of wine and spirits, ranging from the really good to the merely overpriced; two pairs of cashmere gloves from my staff; and a rare first edition of Berenson’s
Drawings of the Florentine Painters
, a book I’d long coveted, from a collector I’d helped get onto a top committee at the National Gallery in Washington.

Most of the stuff was, as I’d expected, high-end boilerplate corporate “gifting,” chosen by administrative assistants and contract shopping consultants. When I finished opening the lot, I reckoned I was looking at around $5K in Madison Avenue store credit, sufficient to see Maecenas through a significant part of our own business-gift budget for 2015.

Just before it was time to go out, B returned my call. She sounds fine, if subdued, enjoying her time with her father and playing the role of mother hen. When we finished, we blew each other long-distance kisses, and thus my fifty-fifth Christmas went into the books. As the old Dodger fans used to say, “Wait ’til next year!”

Today’s the big day, the day I drop off the diary at Marina’s. It’s been a pretty unexciting four days since Christmas. There’ve been the usual hassles to deal with. Clients having trouble finding a notary in Anguilla; last-minute changes in this or that subvention; client-requested billing adjustments; problems with naming rights. One client who wanted to know whether I think his decision to give up his U.S. citizenship for tax reasons will affect NYU’s plan to give him an honorary degree this spring.

Every day, I keep asking myself: where does all this money come from? It seems to me that we’ve added one or two zeros to every new normal. Programs that ten years ago we would have budgeted at $1 million now start at $10 million. In 1971, the Met paid $5.5 million for its Velázquez
Juan de Pareja
; a dealer told me the other day at lunch that if he had it to sell today, he’d ask $250 million. People who used to be happy with a $500,000 annual income now sink into depression if it’s less than $5 million. You hear billionaires complain that the more money you have, the less it seems to buy. If I’d told my old man that Park Avenue apartments like the one he raised me in would one day sell for upwards of $30 million, he’d’ve had me committed. And yet Washington assures us that inflation’s long dead. But it’s not as if I don’t benefit: when the norms escalate like this, no one’s likely to cavil if I bump my own meager fees by another 10 percent, as I’m planning to do next year.

Lucia called yesterday from London to wish me Happy New Year and to report that her concierge business is going great guns, with her Russian clients spending like crazy on property and furnishings now that Putin is sticking it to the oligarchs and they’re shoveling their rubles out of the motherland as fast as they can. She’s also seeing a decided uptick in her “sheik” trade. She
attributes this to fear on the part of Saudi royals, UAE emirs, and other potentates that ISIS may be a real threat down the line, and they better be ready to bail the instant the bad guys in black appear within fifty miles of Riyadh or Doha. London’s no longer as hospitable to these people as it was, and Nevada now seems to be emerging on as the escape hatch of choice, probably because it’s mainly desert and, well, full of hookers.