The Finder: A Novel (3 page)

But now it was time for baseball. The pin-striped Yanks were on the field, expertly whipping the ball around, warming up under a soft seven p.m. sky. Tom had the tickets ready in his hand and settled down in the seats with his two guests, a sixtyish Cuban investor from Miami named Jaime "Jim" Martinez and his protégé, a young man who knew enough to say nada.

"You were right!" agreed Martinez, seeing how close they were to home plate but expecting no less. "Very good seats."

"Absolutely," burbled Tom, the message being
you guys are worth it.
That was half of making a deal, getting that symmetrical rush of greed started. And he should know, he'd made a lot of deals for a guy who was just a few years over forty. Tom Reilly, Senior Executive Vice Presi
dent for Schmoozing Big Investors. Corporate responsibility for the Manufacture of Extremely Valuable Hype. Skills include Smiling Through the Pain, Showing No Fear, and Lying When Necessary and Sometimes When Not. Good with bankers, researchers, stock analysts, the media, anybody. The public face of the company. Handsome but not too handsome. Not pretty. Manly. Solid. Healthy-looking. Confident. Wife a successful Park Avenue internist in private practice. Children: none yet. Stated reason: Too busy. Real reason: Lazy sperm. Weak, undersexed, insecure sperm. Dud bullets, wet firecrackers. Solution: Maybe in vitro, which his wife, being a doctor, wasn't crazy about; she knew the low odds of success and comparatively higher odds of having preemies. State of marriage: Could be better.

But why think about such things? There was money to be made! And in Jim Martinez next to him, Tom Reilly sensed worthy prey. Martinez possessed a full head of silver hair slicked back Pat Riley–style and a charmer's smile, no doubt useful as he fronted for a venture-cap group trying to diversify into biotech projects. The group's funding came from Cuban doctors, lawyers, and real estate developers in southern Florida and Latin America. Hard-core capitalists, Castro haters. Many of them were on their third or fourth wives, had boatloads of getting-whiter-with-every-generation grandchildren who'd grown up with BMWs in the driveways and going to private schools. The pressure to make more money never stopped, even for rich men! Especially for rich men! The group was looking to take a $54 million position in Good Pharma's new synthetic skin project, which was also to say they expected to get a discount on a purchase worth more than $62 million—a chunk of business that Good Pharma would prefer to sell for $69 million or so. Thus the purpose of the evening. Martinez and Tom were creating an atmosphere of bogus informality and cold-blooded heartiness in order to facilitate the knife-fight negotiation to follow.

So it began! The game, the chatter, the corporate foreplay. Three men in blue blazers and good slacks. Tom ordered beers and hot dogs from the attendant and then set about entertaining the Cubans. The first inning blew by, then the second. Yanks up 2–1 over Baltimore. Good tight pitching, a couple of great plays in the infield, one by Jeter.

Then in the third inning the overpaid Yankee sluggers murdered the Orioles' starting pitcher for five runs. The game suddenly threatened to become a laugher, but now Martinez was on his third beer and had become so relaxed that he'd started to explain how the wealthy Cuban investors in Miami were getting frustrated with all the hurricanes that damaged or slowed their real estate projects and hadn't yet figured out how to wire the post-Castro Cuba for their benefit.

"We're tired of risk," Martinez admitted. "So maybe we try something else. Maybe we see what your company can do for us."

"I think you'll find we have a lot to offer," Tom breezed back. "You know, it's not
quite
public knowledge yet, but some of the early research results coming out of these trials show a very promising—"

At this moment an attendant appeared at the end of their aisle. He checked something written on an envelope.

"Tom Reilly?" he asked Martinez.

"He's right here," Martinez said.

The messenger handed Tom the envelope. "I was told to give this to you."

"Thanks," Tom said, quick fingered with a twenty-dollar bill as a tip. The messenger darted away. Tom threw his guests a smile. "Not enough to have e-mail and a phone in your pocket, now they've got to send actual pieces of paper . . ." He tore open the envelope and withdrew a single sheet of yellow stationery with a blue border. He could stand and read his message in the aisle, but that was rude and also suggested a crisis, exactly what he didn't want to suggest. So he unfolded the paper enough to glance quickly at the message, felt it gore him in a soft, private place, and yet had the presence of mind to nod as if merely receiving confirmation of what was expected.

"Anything good?" the foxy old Cuban from Miami nudged.

"Better than good," Tom lied, half a smile on his face as he slipped the message into his breast pocket. "We try to avoid using wireless for very sensitive info. My secretary sent a messenger . . . it's a big, big deal that just got approved and we need to keep hush about it—you understand. Can't announce anything yet."

He nodded conclusively in response to himself and returned his
gaze to the game. How convinced were the men? Maybe not enough.

But he bluffed his way through the end of the inning, then rose to go use the men's room, where he waited urgently in the long line, then bolted to the toilet, closed the door, and sat studying the typed message again.

   Tom, we know that you know there is a problem. We have asked politely but you have not responded to our inquiries.

   We are talking about real money. And real consequences if we don't get it back.

   Tell us now, while you still can.

For a moment, he felt sick. Hot dogs full of crud, mixing with the beer. A feeling he had too often lately. But he fought back the urge.
I still have some good moves to make,
he muttered bitterly to himself,
a lot of goddamned good moves.
Like the New York Giants quarterback ducking out of the rush from a couple of enormous linemen intent on sacking him. A quick step sideways, backpedal to get a moment of safety, then throw long into the end zone. Escape doom with the great play. His mind was a blur of sports images and Good Pharma spreadsheets. He crumpled the yellow paper and threw it into a bin full of beer cups.

When he returned to his seat, the two men from Miami were—what? Gone? He looked up and down the aisles for them.

An older man in the row ahead of him turned around.

"You see those Cuban guys who were here with me?" Tom asked.

The man nodded. "That messenger came back while you were away. He handed them another letter." The man pointed under the seat and Tom leapt to pick it up.

   Gentlemen, your affable host this evening, Mr. Tom Reilly, is in deep trouble. He may be an accessory to large financial crimes. We suspect that it is not in your best interests to be seen with him in such a public venue.

A great cheer went up. Rodriguez had lifted a giant homer into the center field seats. The crowd stood, roaring exultantly as the big man loped around the bases. No one saw the pharmaceutical company executive curled in his seat, fetal in his dismay, at last vomiting at what he knew was going to happen.

Her name is not important here.
She was in her late thirties and working as a legal secretary for a firm on Park Avenue. The attorneys there, men and women alike, disgusted her with their self-importance, their preening fatuousness. But she kept this to herself. She had tried the single life and mostly found disappointment. In her early years some of the young associates tried to date her and she let herself be taken to dinner and then into bed, but these men were, whether they knew it or not, auditioning wives. They talked love and devotion but were in truth matrimonial credentialists; they wanted a wife to have a degree from a good college at the very least and an advanced degree as well. And this she did not. Within a few years it got around the firm that she was easy, that she opened her legs after a few dates, and this, of course she knew, was true. So what? If you liked a guy, why wait? Why is it called
easy?
Why not
eager?
Yes, eager. Once in an associate's office after a late-night race to prepare a court document. Bent over on the windowsill, watching taxis fly down Park Avenue. It
was
exciting. So she liked men,
eagerly.
Liked their muscles and penises and whiskers. Hands and shoulders. Even a man's Adam's apple could be sexy. Who could blame her? But once she'd been labeled, the associates of any promise and discretion steered away from her, and this meant that the younger associates, new to big city life, took their shots, as did some of the older partners, the divorced, almost divorced, and never married. Mostly a disgusting lot, wheezers and nose-hair neglectors. Her boss, one of the
most senior partners, pretended not to notice, and in time the associates and the younger secretaries cycled away to other jobs and people forgot who she had been and began to see her as yet another unmarried, now aging, and lonely woman, which, even though she was only thirty-eight, was true.

As her boss got on in years, he had come to depend on her more and more. She began to catch important errors in his memory and in the letters he wrote, and to his credit he recognized that she was extending his career. But more to his credit, he quietly siphoned off part of his yearly bonus to her—a secret cash arrangement that occurred outside of her regular salary. She worked longer hours and by degrees realized that she did not have the energy and hope necessary to sift and sort through the men still available to her, the thin-fats, the optimistic depressives, the probably/actually gay, the pervomaniacs, all of them. How disappointing! How tiresome! The men in their forties were looking for thirty-two-year-olds, the men in their thirties looking for twenty-five-year-olds. She knew the drill; she'd
been
those women once, enjoyed the attention of older men. Swooned over their
sophistication,
their
power,
their sexy salt-and-pepper hair. Good grief. What was wrong with her now? Her breasts hadn't dropped much. She was still juicy, still
wanton
—maybe. Some of her unmarried friends who suffered from perenially disappointed ovaries had decided to have babies without men, buying sperm on the Internet, lighting a bunch of candles in a dark room, lying back and inseminating themselves. But she didn't want to be a lonely single mom. She didn't know
what
she wanted, except that something interesting, anything, had to happen before—before she turned into her mother!

So she moved from her cozy, so-totally-hip apartment on Twelfth Street in Greenwich Village, where everyone white under the age of fifty was addicted to the Internet, to a three-bedroom house in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, one of the many little tribal neighborhoods that fed the city each day. Still largely Italian but now everybody was living there—Brazilians, Chinese, Russians, Indians, Mexicans, Vietnamese, Africans, even Iraqis. All working crazy hours trying to squeeze onto the jammed, hot-breathed dance floor called American turbo
capitalism. Rang your doorbell, asked if you had work. Painting, roofing, cut grass, you need car washed, lady? Bay Ridge was also the same neighborhood where her parents lived, so she could keep an eye on them. She bought the house using the money the old partner had funneled to her, and this pleased her. She could walk to the subway and always get a seat going into work. Easy, a little shopping on the way home. But her life became quieter and even lonelier. She paid her bills, she planted marigolds and peas and lettuce in the spring, she drank a glass of wine with the news and another before going to bed. The months flew by. She perused the newspaper but forgot what she read, she never remembered her dreams, she bought sensible shoes, she didn't bother to masturbate. Nothing was happening. She considered actually going to church, for the social interaction. How terrible was that?

Certainly she never expected to meet anyone. But one warm Saturday afternoon she opened her door and saw a man in a baseball cap and green T-shirt standing in the yard next door. He was shielding his eyes and inspecting the roof, a short yellow pencil and clipboard in one hand. Meanwhile, she inspected him. "Hi!" she suddenly called, surprising herself. He turned toward her and slipped his pencil into his breast pocket. They got to talking. His father owned the house, he said, and he was just taking care of it, for now. His old red pickup truck sat in the driveway and she realized she'd seen it there a few times before. His name was Ray Grant, he told her. She liked Ray, liked him in the way women will sometimes like a certain man. He seemed unaware of how his shoulders and arms looked in the T-shirt, the way his jeans hung on his hips. She didn't see a wedding ring. His fingernails were clean. His eyes were the bluest blue, which she always loved, and she saw both confidence and aloofness in him. He wasn't going to tell her anything, or not much, even.

Okay—she threw herself at him! Invited him in for coffee, and she heard his heavy boots behind her as they went up the stairs into her kitchen. Coffee became a late lunch. He wasn't in a hurry, didn't check his watch. Didn't say much, either. She just talked and talked, got herself more excited.

"So your dad owns the place next door?" she repeated, when the conversation paused. "Maybe I've seen him a few times, come to think of it, but not in a while."

Ray nodded. "He's sick, so I came back to be with him."

"Sick?"