Graveland: A Novel (24 page)

The succession narrative is fairly well established by this stage. For several years, whenever the subject came up, the names of a few high-profile contenders from within the company would be trotted out, but then Vaughan took the decisive step of bringing in an outsider as
his
new COO, a move widely seen as an unequivocal appoint-and-anoint. It was designed to end the speculation—that much is clear—but it also had the effect of emphasizing just what a one-man show the Oberon Capital Group really was.

Today’s announcement will bring an end to all of that.

As for an IPO, Howley intends to put that issue to bed next week, on Thursday or Friday, when he appears on Bloomberg to do an in-depth interview.

The final arrangements have yet to be made.

Approaching Seventy-first Street now, Howley leans back in his seat and takes a deep breath.

This is the big one, the pinnacle of his career.

Five or six years at the helm of Oberon and he can think about retiring. It’s incredible. Only seems like yesterday that he was moving to D.C. to work as a consultant at the Defense Department.

The car pulls up outside the hotel. Howley gets out, and as he’s standing there on the sidewalk he feels his phone vibrating in his pocket.

He pulls it out and looks at the display.

Vaughan.

He’s been expecting this. They went over the statement very briefly last night and everything was in order, but it was a business call and neither of them made any reference whatsoever to the significance of what was being set in train here. Howley is no sentimentalist, but he has a strong sense of occasion and would like to see this particular one marked in some way.

Or at the very least acknowledged.

He understands that Vaughan probably has mixed feelings, as well as a degree of trepidation about the publicity side of things—but on that score, just as Howley predicted, all eyes this morning are on Orchard Street.

On this Lizzie Bishop.

Whose fifteen-minute allotment of fame, as far as Vaughan is concerned, has come at just the right time.

Glancing around at sunny Madison Avenue, Howley raises the phone to his ear. “Jimmy?”

“Craig, how are you? Listen, meant to say last night, I’m thinking of heading out of town for a while, give you a little breathing space.”

“No, no, Jimmy, come on, that’s not necessary, you don’t have to—”

“No, I don’t. But I might anyway. Spend a little time at the house in Palm Beach. Relax, do a bit of sailing—”

Sailing?

“—play some golf. That’d be the
real
reason, if you want to know the truth.”

“Would you…” Howley doesn’t know how to phrase this. The Jimmy Vaughan he saw earlier in the week was a very sick man. “Would you…”

“Would I be
able
to, you mean? Well, listen, this new medication I’m on—the one I told you about, that the boys at Eiben are working on?—it’s
amazing
. It’s finally kicking in, and I actually feel pretty good for a change.”

“Holy shit, Jimmy.” Howley isn’t sure what to make of this. But one thing does occur to him.
The boys at Eiben?
Isn’t that a little weird? Given the history, given—

Then he sees Dave Fishman, Oberon’s director of corporate affairs, coming through the hotel’s revolving doors, and he gets distracted. “Er … that’s great, it really is…”

“Don’t worry, Craig,” Vaughan says. “I’m still going to die.”

“
Jesus,
Jimmy.”

“No, I just mean I mightn’t have such a miserable time doing it.”

As Fishman approaches, eyebrows raised, pointing at his watch, Howley feels a flicker of panic, of uncertainty. It’s as though he has lost his bearings all of a sudden. “Er, listen, Jimmy,” he says, “I have to—”

“Go, go, you’re fine.” That was whispered. But what Vaughan says next is much louder. “You know what, I might just stick around. This could be interesting.”

“Good … yeah, okay.”

“And Craig?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t fuck this up on me, you hear?”

*   *   *

It’s nearly one o’clock, and Frank has an uneasy sense that something is under way. But he has no idea what it is and no one will talk to him.

There’s a lot of coming and going, a lot of huddled, urgent-looking conversations taking place between busy, important-looking people.

He keeps glancing around to see if he can spot that detective he spoke to a few times during the night. What was his name? Lenny Byron.
There
was a man you could deal with—open, direct, reluctant to just peddle any old line from the department.

But Detective Byron doesn’t seem to be here anymore.

It’s not that
no one
will talk to Frank—there are liaison officers and trauma counselors and all kinds of spokespeople available and willing to talk to him, but what they really are is a sort of buffer zone.

Right now he wants to talk to the important-looking people.

Because he has his suspicions.

Gleaned from various conversations and from things he’s overheard.

For instance, it’s Frank’s understanding that there is considerable FBI skepticism about the explosives. Apparently, what led them to the apartment in the first place was a tip-off from an informant inside the protest movement regarding a firearms trail. All they had was a search warrant for this address. They had no idea what they were stumbling upon, and it was only the simultaneous tip-off from Ellen Dorsey that enabled them to get on top of things so fast.

But a subsequent trawl of their intelligence has turned up nothing that would indicate any explosives capability on the part of the Coady brothers.

What worries Frank is that if the FBI and JTTF think the explosives claim is a bluff, then they might do something reckless.

His second suspicion about what might be going on has to do with this much-rumored uncle who is supposed to be arriving from Florida. First, if it’s true, then where the fuck is he? It’s been over twenty hours already since this thing started, and last time Frank looked Florida was about a three-hour plane ride away, not nestled somewhere between Australia and New Zealand. And second, there seems to be a serious disagreement about the advisability of using this guy even if he does arrive—it has to do with some bullshit psych assessment of the family dynamics.

Frank’s third suspicion arises from that conversation he had this morning with Deb. She wouldn’t say anything more about it, wouldn’t elaborate or confirm, but the idea seemed to be that she and her husband—fucking Lloyd Hackler—would go on TV and
talk
about the situation.

Lloyd would talk about Lizzie.

His
daughter.

Deb and Lloyd have been married for three years, and for two of those Lizzie has been away at college. So what’s he going to say about her?

It’s absurd.

And it’s not just the humiliation of being excluded. Frank feels
that
for sure. It’s also the question of motivation.

Why would Deb do this?

He doesn’t know.

She’s kept her distance all morning, spending most of it on the phone—but now, just in these last few minutes, Frank has noticed a slight increase in the levels of activity around her, and he can’t help thinking this is it.

She’s going to do it.

When Lloyd Hackler appears a short while later, it’s pretty much confirmed, and Frank’s stress levels skyrocket. Agitated, and only a few yards away, he looks on as a little group forms, Deb, Lloyd, a man he guesses to be some high-ranking TV executive, and Victoria Hannahoe, the preternaturally radiant anchor of a cable news show he can’t remember the name of. He watches as these people talk among themselves, smiling, throwing hand gestures around, and even, on occasion, laughing.

A few moments later, they begin to move away—where they’re going, Frank doesn’t know, but he starts to move as well, to follow them.

His heart pounding.

At which point an arm shoots across his chest and blocks his path.

“Frank, don’t.”

He turns to his left, and exhales in defeat. It’s Lenny Byron.

“Detective.”

“That look on your face, Frank. Bit of a giveaway. I’d stay here if I were you.”

“Yeah … okay.”

Byron lowers his arm.

Frank nods his head, indicating Deb and the others. “Where are they going exactly?”

Byron turns and watches as the group recedes down the street. “One of the trailers back there on Delancey. They’ve set up a temporary little, I don’t know, it’s like a little … studio or something. But—”

He pauses and makes a pained face. Byron is in his late thirties. He’s dark and handsome, but he looks overworked. He could also do with a shave and a haircut and a new suit.

“Yeah?”

“There’s something you should know. It’s not just going to be an interview with Victoria Hannahoe, they’re going to do it like a … sort of on-air appeal, and they’re going to run it directly into the apartment.”

“What?”

Frank feels weak, faint, as if his body is suddenly remembering it hasn’t slept in over thirty hours.

“It’s another … strategy,” Byron says, speaking almost under his breath now, and glancing around, “not necessarily what
I’d
do, but the Bureau’s running the show here.”

Frank tries to steady himself. “But what about
me
?” he says, with great effort. “I’m her father.”

“I know, Frank, I know.” Byron looks at him directly and maintains eye contact. “It’s a calculation on their part. They feel … they feel Lizzie is somehow in control in there now. That’s not based solely on the phone call, they have partial sightlines in through the various windows as well, and that’s just how they’re reading it. Julian has more or less folded. Apparently. And Alex is next.” He pauses. “So they think a direct appeal to Lizzie might work.”

“Appeal? Coming from Deb, maybe. But from
Lloyd
? You’ve got to be kidding me. She hates that prick. It’ll … it’ll backfire, if anything.” He breathes in hard, suddenly fighting back tears. “
I
should be doing this with Deb.” Then he says it again.
“I’m her father.”

Byron nods, doesn’t look away. “Listen, Frank, I don’t know how up to speed you are on what’s been happening over the last few hours … out there.” He waves an arm in the air, indicating … what? The city? The world? “I’m talking about the Internet, Frank. You’ve been pretty much crucified. This guy you worked for, this Paloma guy, the area manager or something? Man, you must have really pissed him off, because he’s been bad-mouthing you a
lot,
and it’s caught on. Now you’re like some kind of fucking Bruce Banner character, I don’t know, some kind of ticking time bomb, and that’s
not
who they want in that trailer doing their little live broadcast.”

“But—”

Frank stops. What’s the point? This is a nightmare.

“Look, man,” Byron says, “I don’t know you from Adam, okay, but I know
people,
and this is clearly bullshit. You still have to be careful, though. So let me give you a piece of advice.”

Frank looks at him. He’s bewildered.

Advice?

“There’s going to be more of this,” Byron says. “One way or the other. And if you want to come through it, you’ll have to get some help. To mount a counterattack.”

“I don’t—”

“A press agent, someone in PR, a journalist who’s got your back, I don’t know. But right now, Frank, you’re a sitting duck for these people.”

A few minutes later, standing at the barrier, still numb from this latest shock, Frank starts patting down his pockets, then searching them one by one.

Ellen Dorsey gave him her card, and he took it. He didn’t throw it away. He put it somewhere.

He eventually finds it in his left back pocket.

He holds the card up to read the number on it. He takes out his phone and calls her.

*   *   *

The phone vibrating on the glass coffee table is what wakes her. She turns her head, looks at it, and lets it go to message. The phone is on silent, but it makes this low buzzy sound on a hard surface when it vibrates. She reaches out for it, groaning from the effort, and then sits upright on the couch. She looks at the display, doesn’t recognize the number.

She checks to see if there’s a message. There is. It’s from Frank Bishop.

There are messages from other people, too, five in total—that one just now from Frank, one an hour ago from Val Brady, one just before that from Liz Zambelli, and two much earlier from Max Daitch.

Everyone agitated.

But Frank the most, naturally.

All he said, in his shaky, tired voice, was
Ellen, this is Frank Bishop
.
Please call me
.

It occurs to her that she has no idea what’s going on. The last she knew of anything was sometime after 5
A.M
. when she was in that bar on Norfolk Street with Val Brady.

She checks the time on her phone.

1:25.

That’s more than eight hours.

Is it over? What happened? She slides off the couch, picks up the TV remote, points it, and flicks. Then she goes over to her desk and taps a key on the keyboard.

Before she calls him back she’d better get some kind of an update.

Stiff from sleeping on the couch, she hobbles into the kitchen and puts on some coffee.

Over the next ten minutes, sipping espresso, and dividing her attention between the TV and the computer, she updates herself comprehensively.

The first shock is that it’s still going on. The second is that Lizzie Bishop has supplanted the Coady brothers as the focus of everyone’s attention. And in what seems to be something of an unfortunate sideshow, Frank Bishop himself has come in for a bit of a hammering.

Does that have anything to do with why he called?

She needs more coffee. She goes and makes some. Then she has a pee. Then she takes a quick shower.

Putting it off.

Because what’s she supposed to tell him? What can she do for him? She’s not in a position to do anything.