Heart of Palm (31 page)

Ponzi.

It wasn’t working. That word, that
word
was back, buzzing around in his head like a mosquito, and he sighed, sat down again, put his head in his hands, gave in to it.
Fuck.
Ponzi. A Ponzi scheme. As of this morning, that’s what he was running. He was a swindler. A criminal. And the worst part was that he wasn’t even sure how it had happened.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. He was an investment manager—no, an
Investment Manager
, Capital Letters, Big-Time. He was Carson Bravo, Investment Manager. It was his calling, his career, his entire identity. It was all he had ever wanted to do, and he’d wanted to do it well. He’d been fine for so long, even through the decade’s lowest points, even after the 9/11 plummet, the housing collapse, all of it, he’d kept his head above water, kept the clients reassured. They’d held even, every damn one of them; well, even if they hadn’t
made
money they hadn’t
lost
money—not as much money as some investors, anyway, put it that way. But now, oh, sweet Jesus, now. It was all coming apart.

He’d started the fund two years ago, called it the Bravo Multi-Fund, just liked the ring of it. He’d sat smug and satisfied for a good eighteen months, watching how his clients liked the ring of it, too. He’d sold $1.8 million in the fund in the first year alone, with a good third of that in one fell swoop to one of his biggest clients, Christine Hughes, the wife of one of St. Augustine’s most successful electrical contractors. She came into a bit of family money and didn’t want her husband to control it, so she came to Carson for investment management. He’d managed her investments, all right. And he’d managed a few other things for her, too, many of them managed quite well, in fact, in a twist of tangled sheets in an executive suite at the Hilton at World Golf Village. One afternoon, he’d managed to make her come three times in the space of an hour. That’s how well he’d managed her.

But the fund. The fund. The screwed-up, bollixed-up fund that he’d decided to sectorize, putting the entire focus of the available capital into the tech stocks he’d felt in his bones would be a sure thing. Tech can’t lose, he’d told himself over and over again, shooting a virtual bird at the prevailing wisdom of diversification, low risk, high discipline. Tech can’t lose. Or at least, tech can’t lose
twice,
he said, when the nagging voice of reason reminded him of the collapse of the dot-coms in 2000. It would be like getting struck by lightning twice in one lifetime. Not gonna happen. So he’d done it, had hammered out the plan, and when he was finished, the portfolio was so tech-heavy that the entire Internet, he reasoned, would have to come crashing down around his head before the fund could fail.

But fail it did. Badly. Spectacularly. So spectacularly that last month he’d begun a new campaign—promising 10 percent annual returns—just to pull in new investors who would offer the liquidity he needed to maintain operations. Just last week he’d had to doctor the report to Christine Hughes to obscure just how badly her losses could be by the end of the year. And just this morning he’d written the first dividend check funded solely by the deposits of his most recent investors.

Ponzi. Ponzi. Ponzi.

But what else could he do? If Christine Hughes started losing serious money, she’d demand immediate redemption. He had no doubt about that. And Christine’s cashing in her chips would lead to a landslide—when his newer investors got wind of her bailout, they’d surely follow suit, demanding a seven-day redemption of their funds that would come from where, exactly? The whole damn thing was a house of cards, and if he didn’t do something, fast, he could expect the SEC to be knocking on his door in the very near future. To make matters worse, Christine Hughes would not, he was quite sure, be satisfied with simply pulling out her investments. She’d make a beeline to Elizabeth who, judging by recent events, was hanging by a thread in this tenuous marriage and was, he suspected, increasingly making eyes at his brother. No money. No business. No Elizabeth. No Bell. Just a cold cot on the wrong side of the bars at the Florida State Penitentiary. That was it. If Christine Hughes lost her money, Carson lost everything.

Not gonna happen.

Because they were selling Aberdeen.
And
Uncle Henry’s. He was going to make sure of it. Pennies from fucking
heaven
were falling out of the sky in the shape of this fat cat Alonzo Cryder and his Atlanta development corporation, and Carson would be damned if he would let Saint Frank or Arla or whacked-out Sofia stand in the way of the financial freedom that each of them so desperately needed. Especially him. If he had his share of the proceeds from the real estate sales, he’d have enough liquid capital to bail out the fund, reallocate the frigging tech stocks, and right the ship. Then he could buy Christine Hughes out and extricate himself from the vise grip she had on his balls, both literally and figuratively, before his extracurricular activities put the final nail in the coffin of his marriage. He just needed the money.

At least he had this chance, this hope, this missing link, lying in a bed somewhere on one of the floors above his head. Remarkable, Alonzo Cryder’s detective work. Cryder, working from tax records, employment histories and—not too surprisingly—a rap sheet, had been successful in tracking down the one person who held the key to getting this entire real estate deal put to bed, and in so doing erasing that word from Carson’s head forever and ever.
Ponzi.

“He was admitted after an altercation outside a bar,” Cryder had said on the phone. “It’s the same guy—I got the social from a guy I know down there on the police force, and it matches the one you gave me.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“You tell me.”

“No,” Carson had said. “I mean, why was he admitted to the hospital?”

“Oh, that—well, they won’t disclose medical information, but the cop I know said he was banged up after the fight, having a hard time walking. I’d guess he broke something, tore something. Can’t be good, a guy his age in a brawl, right?”

No, thought Carson, can’t be good. But that didn’t surprise him.

He looked at his watch. 9:37. This was bullshit. Why did he have to wait till 10:00? It wasn’t like the patients were on any timetable. It was a damn hospital. What, they had board meetings? Tee times? Insane. He waited until the woman at the reception desk turned to greet someone, and then he made a run for the elevator and rode it to the third floor, which, the directory said, housed General Medicine. As good a guess as any. Pediatrics was out. Obstetrics was out. Might as well start somewhere.

Carson exited the elevator. There was a nurses’ station, but nobody was around. He wandered down one short hallway, then another, each lined with small, dark rooms. From one room came the sound of an old woman wailing.

“
Yvonne!
” she said. “Timmy!”

He stopped in the hallway, listened for a moment.

“Yvonne! Timmy! Help! I need help!” the woman said.

He walked back to the nurses’ station, but there was still nobody in sight. His heart had begun to twitter in an uncomfortable way, and he felt himself getting angry. He didn’t like feeling anxious, didn’t like situations that bred anxiety. Anxiety was the enemy of productivity. Fear was the enemy of power. He’d taught himself that, over the years. He’d taught himself a lot of things. He wandered the halls a second time.

“Timmy! I need you! Help me, please help me!” the old woman said. It sounded like she was starting to panic.

What the hell were they doing in this place? Why didn’t anyone come? He poked his head around the curtain to peer in at the old lady.

“Honey,” she said immediately, spotting him in the doorway. “I’m about to wee the bed.” She was a tiny thing, shriveled and gray but with a horrible booming voice. She fixed her vision on his face. Carson felt sick.

“I’ll get the nurse,” he said.

“I don’t need a nurse. I need a bedpan.”

“I’ll get the nurse,” he said again.

“Honey, I’m going to wee right here in this bed! You get me a bedpan right this minute!” Holy Jesus on high. Holy
shit
. He looked around the tiny room, spotted something that looked like it might have been a bedpan on a rolling tray of equipment. He reached for it, panicked for a second that it might not be clean.

“Honey!” the old lady said. “It’s coming!”

He grabbed the pan and put it on the old lady’s chest, then turned to flee the curtained enclosure. “I need it
under
me!” she screamed. “Come back!”

Carson kept walking. At the nurses’ station he pumped a fat blob of Germ-X into his hands, rubbed them together angrily. Two nurses sat at the station now, each engrossed at a computer. “There’s a lady back there having a problem,” he said, and the women looked at each other and rolled their eyes. “I’ll go,” one said. “You got her last time.”

“Yvonne! Timmy!” Down the hall, the woman’s voice was fading; she must have been growing tired. He tried not to wonder whether she’d been able to implement the bedpan in time. Holy God, he wanted out of this place. He looked at his watch. 9:49.

“Is it visiting hours yet?” he said to the nurse still seated at the computer. She was short and bloated, and her scrubs were tight across her belly. Why did they put these people in scrubs? Was there any more unflattering attire in the world? And my God, were
all
the women in this hospital unattractive?

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You’ll need to wait downstairs.”

Oh, for Christ’s sake. But he was nervous now, maddeningly anxious. The sound of the old woman’s voice had cut right through his nerves, left him feeling frayed, raw. Her loneliness was like a specter—pervasive and terrifying. He didn’t argue with the nurse; he rode the elevator back down to the first floor and slumped back in his original chair in the waiting room. A teenaged boy now sat in one of the other chairs, watching the TV. He didn’t look up at Carson. The woman at the reception desk glared at him over her monogrammed glasses. It was all he could do not to give her the finger.

On the TV, a cluster of police vehicles was arranged in a semicircle in front of a two-story gray building with a bland, rectangular profile and a bad roof. Several of the police had left their cars and walked around to the sides of the building. They crouched behind trees. Their guns were drawn. They peered up at the building. A newscaster rattled on excitedly, but Carson couldn’t hear what he was saying.

“What’s going on?” he said to the kid in the other chair. He was a nice-looking kid, short hair, blue eyes. Probably played football for his high school. Probably got good grades. A nice girlfriend. Clean socks. You could just tell.

“A shooting,” the kid said. “It’s Orlando. Some guy went in there and is shooting the place up. They’re trying to get him out right now. It’s live.”

He still hadn’t looked at Carson, but he spoke with a quiet confidence. He was on the ball, this one. He’d go far.

“What’s in there?” he said. “What’s the business?”

“Financial something,” the kid said. “Guy came in and shot a coworker. Dead. He’s on the second floor. The people saw him do it before they ran out. The shooter’s still up there with the gun. They’re trying to figure out if he got anybody else.”

Carson stared at the TV, picturing the dead man somewhere on the second floor. “Huh,” he said. “Not what he had planned for today, was it?”

“The shooter?” said the kid, turning to him.

“The dead guy,” Carson said.

“No,” the kid said. He tipped his head a bit, looked at Carson like he was trying to figure him out. “No, I guess not.” He smiled. That was some kid. His father was probably proud of him. Huh.

He realized his leg was shaking double-time. He got up and walked outside, through the clouds of cigarette smoke hanging over the entryway. One man sat in a wheelchair, smoking. Another man, a nurse or an orderly, stood behind the wheelchair, also smoking. Carson shook his head.
Unreal.

He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, punched Arla’s number.

“Hello?”

“Mom,” he said. “Are you getting ready?”

“Who is this?” Arla said.

“You know it’s me,” he said impatiently.

“You don’t ever say hello, Carson. Don’t you think you could say hello?”

“Hello,” he said. “Are you getting ready?”

She sighed. “It’s early. Frank said he’d be here a little later.”

“You need to be ready when he gets there. These Vista people are coming all the way from Atlanta. You don’t want to be late for this meeting.”

“I don’t even want to
go
to this meeting.”

“That’s beside the point.” A waft of smoke drifted his way, and he walked farther into the parking lot to escape it.

“Says who?” Arla said.

“You said you’d go. You said you’d listen to what they have to say.”

“Oh, Carson,” she began.

“
No
,” he said. “
No.
You said you would. This is important —these people have money. Don’t you get it? These people could change all our lives.”