The Girl From Home: A Thriller (15 page)

“But I didn't. The fund is doing fine and I've made you millions!” Jonathan shouts back.

Komaroff puts up his hands. “I don't see any reason to prolong this,” he says to no one in particular. Then he turns his focus on Jonathan. “You are hereby suspended from Harper Sawyer, without pay, effective immediately. We will be conducting a thorough investigation. During the pendency of this matter, you are not to come to the office or attempt to contact anyone at the firm, or to access any corporate data remotely. We have revoked all of your passwords and frozen all of your accounts.”

They froze all his accounts. Komaroff might just as well have shot him in the head. That would have ended his life more efficiently than denying him every penny he has in the world.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, I've got over twenty million dollars in that account,” Jonathan says as if in a daze. Then more forcefully, “That's
my
fucking money!”

“That's a matter for the courts to decide, Mr. Caine,” Benjamin Ethan says calmly. “And until they do, every penny is staying right here.”

“Yeah, well, we'll see if my lawyers agree with that,” Jonathan snaps, even though he doesn't have lawyers. And now that he doesn't have any money, the chance of his getting lawyers—or even a single lawyer—is not very high.

In fact, he has nothing now. No job. No money. Zero. Nada. Zilch.

“Security will escort you out of the building,” Lawrence says. He's obviously not the least bit intimidated by Jonathan's threat of a battalion of attorneys descending on Harper Sawyer to unfreeze his accounts.

Lawrence rises and makes his way to the door. He pushes it open to reveal the four men who had greeted Jonathan at the elevator upon his arrival. Security must have been standing guard just outside Komaroff's office the whole time, ready to come in if Jonathan needed to be subdued.

If Jonathan had still been employed, he would have earned more in two weeks than all four of them combined make in a year. Now these lunkheads are showing him the door.

“This isn't the end of this,” Jonathan snarls. “Not by a long shot.”

“For your sake, I hope it is,” Komaroff says, more in sadness than in anger. “Because I have the feeling it's only going to get worse for you.”

*  *  *

“You're home early. Did something happen at work?” Natasha says when Jonathan enters the apartment at six o'clock.

He's stayed out as long as he could—sitting in a near-empty movie theater watching two showings of some film he now can't even remember. Apparently, he should have stayed for a third show if he wanted to sidestep the comment Natasha just made.

Even though Natasha has presented him with another opportunity to come clean, he rejects it out of hand. Admitting failure is not something Jonathan's prepared to do. Not now. Maybe not ever.

“Everything's fine at work,” he says. “I think I ate something at lunch that didn't agree with me. I'm going to lie down for a little bit.”

He enters his bedroom and takes a step toward the window, staring out into the Hudson River. One thought swirls in his brain: How will he survive?

The co-op would likely sell for close to ten million, but it's worthless to him, at least in the short term. It would take six months at least to close on the sale. In the meantime, he can't even access the equity, because the co-op board rules prohibit home equity loans.

The Bentley is a prepaid lease, and although he might be able to sell it, Natasha would want to know why and he isn't ready to cross that particularly treacherous Rubicon. The artwork might fetch some cash, and Natasha's jewelry is probably worth in the neighborhood of $250,000, but, once again, he can't sell it without alerting her to the mess he's made. Besides, art and jewelry of that quality has to be sold at auction. A pawnshop would give him, at most, twenty cents on the dollar. He looks down at the Lange & Söhne chronograph on his wrist, remembering that he paid fifty thousand for it. The good folks at Tourneau might give him half that now.

Natasha wouldn't know if they stopped paying the mortgage or maintenance, so between his Amex card, the twenty thousand he'd moved to his checking account last month, and pawning the watch, there might be enough to get them through year's end. But then what?

Outside his window, Jonathan sees whitecaps on the Hudson, a ferry circling the Statue of Liberty. A second option occurs to him. He could just throw himself out the window. Better yet, hightail it out of here and start his life over.

“Not yet,” he says aloud, albeit in a whisper. Even though all he can see right now is defeat, as long as he stays in the game, there's still a chance he can win it.

J
onathan spends the evening in the ICU, sitting beside his father in an uncomfortable chair. At around midnight one of the ICU nurses shows him that there's a family lounge on the floor, complete with a television and sofa. Thereafter he divides his time between watching his father sleep and a
Rocky
marathon on Spike.

Jackie texts that she's thinking about him and wishes she could be there. He imagines she sent it while holed up in her bathroom, with the door locked, and then erased the message immediately after hitting send so Rick wouldn't find it.

Still, he appreciates the gesture. For a moment, it makes him feel slightly less alone.

*  *  *

Jonathan falls asleep in the lounge midway through
Rocky V
, and then awakes at seven in the morning in a panic, consumed by the same sense of dread that his father was dead that fell upon him when he entered Lakeview for the first time.

He races to the ICU, failing to abide by the protocol of washing and putting on the paper clothing. Nothing has changed, however. His father continues to snore quietly into his breathing tube.

“You can't be in here like that,” a nurse scolds.

She's the youngest one he's yet encountered, early twenties, he figures. Something like a frat-boy fantasy of a nurse. Long, curly reddish hair, pale, freckled skin, and a uniform that fits snugly.

“I'm sorry,” Jonathan says. “I . . . I just got scared for a second.”

He allows her to lead him back to the nurses' station. Once he's there, relief slowly begins to settle in. As his other senses return, he realizes that he's in serious need of coffee.

“Where's the cafeteria here?” he asks.

“Second floor,” the nurse says.

“I shouldn't be more than ten minutes. I'm just going to go down there, get some coffee, and come straight back. Here's my cell number.” Jonathan reaches over and grabs a pen and a pad off the desk. “If the doctor shows up, please call me and hold her here. I've been waiting all night to talk to her, so please, please don't let her leave.”

The nurse smiles at Jonathan, almost as if she's taking pity on how pathetic he sounds. “The earliest Dr. Goldman will get here is eight, and she usually arrives closer to nine. But if for some reason she comes earlier, I won't let her leave. Promise.”

Jonathan thanks her and heads to the second floor. The Lakeview cafeteria is decorated for the holiday, complete with a large tree covered in ornaments and a four-foot-high menorah beside it. Cardboard cutouts of Santa and reindeer adorn the walls side by side with Jewish stars. The overall effect, at least to Jonathan's mind, is that the displays make the place even more depressing.

The cafeteria sign proclaims that they proudly brew Starbucks coffee, and just the thought of caffeine perks Jonathan up. In addition to the largest coffee available, he buys an almond croissant that actually doesn't look half-bad.

True to his word, he's gone less than ten minutes. Upon his return to the ICU, the redheaded nurse assures him that the doctor hasn't shown up yet. Jonathan tells her that he's going to be in the family lounge and asks her to come find him when the doctor arrives.

Back in the lounge, Jonathan has the crushing need to call someone. To share that his father is near death, to share the experience so he knows it's real, and feel less alone.

Jackie is whom he'd really like to call, but at this hour she's likely in bed next to Rick. He could call Amy, but she's either asleep or in a frenzy getting the kids out the door for school. Besides, he still has nothing to report, which means he'll spend most of the conversation trying to comfort her. Better to call his sister after he speaks to the doctor, when he has some information to impart. The only other person in his life is Natasha, but she's the last person Jonathan wants to speak to.

He honestly doesn't remember when he stopped having friends. There were guys in college and, later, business school whom he kept in touch with for a while, and then work colleagues became what passed as his social acquaintances.

The reality is that for the past few years, Haresh Venagopul has been Jonathan's best and only friend. Jonathan knows that this is a call he simply should not make. He has that same feeling that goes through your mind right before drunk-dialing an ex. And just like most people do when confronted with the warning, he ignores it.

Harper Sawyer disconnected Jonathan's company cell phone when they kicked him to the curb, which means that Haresh won't recognize the new phone number. Jonathan's reasonably sure that if caller ID revealed his identity, Haresh would let the call go to voice mail.

Instead, Haresh answers on the second ring.

“Haresh,” Jonathan says.

It takes a few seconds for his former colleague to place the voice. “Jonathan . . . ?”

“Surprised?”

“I am, actually. You know that they told me I can't talk to you. No one here can. In fact, I'm sure my phones are tapped, just in case you called.”

“I know, and I'm sorry you're in that position, Haresh. And, truthfully, I wouldn't have called if it weren't important. And it's not about the fund or the investigation.”

Jonathan laughs to himself at the irony of his last statement. He's calling about something important, not that other trifling stuff like the twenty-five million of his assets that Harper Sawyer has frozen or whether he's going to go to jail, which until a few weeks ago Jonathan had viewed as the most important things there were, much more so than mere life and death.

“The thing is . . .” Jonathan continues, “I'm sitting here in a hospital in East Carlisle, New Jersey—that's where I'm from, and my father is in the ICU. You remember my mom died in March? Anyway, my father's been out of it for a while, dementia of some type, and I've been living at his place so I can spend time with him. I'm waiting for the doctor to get here and give me a sense of what's actually going on, and I felt like . . . I don't know, that I just wanted to tell someone about it. So . . . I didn't feel so goddamn alone.”

The silence is long enough that Jonathan actually checks his phone to see whether Haresh hung up somewhere during his speech. But the call is still connected.

“Hey, I'm sorry,” Haresh says, sounding sincere. “I really am. I . . . I didn't know.”

“Thanks, man. It's actually a little tougher than I thought it'd be. He's been sick for a while, but the thought that he's going to be gone soon . . . maybe today, and that's it. Forever.”

“Is Natasha with you?”

“No . . . oh, that's a whole other story.”

Jonathan considers whether to confide in Haresh about his marital woes, but decides better of it. The purpose of this call is not to prove how far he's fallen since being canned by Harper Sawyer.

“You gotta stay strong, Jonathan. I know you've hit a rough patch, and your dad . . . that's tough even if everything in your life was going great. I wish . . . I wish I could say something to help. Or better yet, I wish I could come out there and hang out a little . . . but I'm afraid I just can't.”

Jonathan knows that Haresh can't do or say anything helpful without risking his job, maybe even prison. Even this phone call will likely be construed by Komaroff & Co. as Haresh giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

“Thanks, Haresh. I didn't expect you to come visit. I totally get what must be going on there with you. I . . . um . . . I really just wanted to tell someone. I've always liked and admired you. Not sure if I told you that enough when we were working together.” Jonathan clears his throat, trying to shake away any chance that he'll choke up. “Okay. I gotta go see some doctors and I imagine I ruined your day, on account that you're now going to spend it with Legal. But it's real good talking to you, Haresh.”

“You too, Jonathan. Stay strong, okay?”

*  *  *

Jonathan is sitting beside his father's bed when Dr. Goldman finally enters the ICU. She's African American, and he assumes that very few people aren't surprised by that, given her surname. Like Whoopi Goldberg, he muses. She's also younger than Jonathan had expected, probably not more than a few years out of med school.

Dr. Goldman spends about fifteen seconds at each of the first three beds, doing little more than glancing at the clipboard that hangs off the footboard. She does the same thing at William Caine's bedside, but after reading his chart, she looks at her patient, and then at Jonathan.

“You the son?” she asks.

“Yes. I'm Jonathan Caine. How is he?”

She scrunches her face, as if she stepped on something that's hurt her foot. “His pressure is very depressed, which has put him in a semi-comatose state.”

“Why did this happen?”

Dr. Goldman's facial expression doesn't change. “A patient's blood pressure dropping means that blood isn't moving through the veins at a normal rate. That can occur for any number of reasons, and with an elderly patient who's already in poor health, like your father, it could truly be at least ten different causes. As a result, I'm less concerned with understanding why this happened than with how to increase the blood flow so that his condition improves.”