City of Dreams (24 page)

After the Revolution, New Yorkers rebuilt the ruined city. By 1800, they had extended the tangle of streets another mile north of the Common. And the city fathers decided to bring order to the growth, because twenty-four square miles of island remained between Houston Street and the Harlem River.

So, in 1811, a board of commissioners conceived of a grid, twelve avenues running north to south, a hundred and fifty-five streets running east to west. They prescribed lot sizes, block sizes, street widths. Some people thought the plan was a waste of time because they couldn’t imagine the city extending farther north. Some said the grid was about as imaginative as a plowed field. But most knew it was plain prophesy.

The lines were drawn with pen and ink on a map, and then the streets were cut with pick and shovel across the fields and outcroppings, through the grand estates and shanty farms. Only the diagonal of Broadway defied the plan, and each time it crossed an avenue, it forced an open space into the unrelenting density—Union Square, Madison Square, Herald Square, Times Square, and the traffic circle with the statue of Columbus. Once the building began, it moved north at the rate of more than a mile a decade.

By 1910, the city had reached all the way to the top of the island, so they went back to the bottom to build again. But this time, they built
up
, which was easier in New York than in most cities, because Manhattan Island was really a sliver of granite, solid bedrock to support the biggest buildings that technology could invent or money could buy. And since the city by then had become the center of American commerce, finance, and culture, there was plenty of money to buy the technology, and plenty of competition to be the biggest—and the best—in everything.

So the skyscrapers rose: the New York World Building, eighteen stories in 1890; the Flatiron, twenty-one stories in 1902; the Metropolitan Life Building, with the lantern on the roof, fifty stories in 1909; the Woolworth Building, an amazing sixty stories in 1913; and on up the island, to the Chrysler Building and the Empire State.

And then, another generation went back to the bottom to start again with the World Trade Center in 1970. And then . . .

The offices of MarketSpin were in the Time Warner Center.

That’s why Peter Fallon was standing there ruminating about New York.

He had Googled Kathy Flynn the night before. He had debated whether he would send her an e-mail, but he knew it would annoy Evangeline, so he hadn’t.

Kathy had e-mailed him instead:

Peter: Long time, no see. Hope all is well. The ever-observant Austin Arsenault noticed that you and I were at Southwestern Iowa State together. He asked me about you. I told him you were very smart and very handsome. But I didn’t tell him everything. A girl should have a few secrets. Any time you want to know about him, contact me. Come by the office. We can talk. Kathy,
www.marketspin.com
.

So there it was. She was offering him the kind of knowledge that he should have before he ventured into a meeting with Arsenault, even if she was flirting with him.

And business was business. So he sent Kathy a text. “Do you have some time? I’m in Columbus Circle.”

He told himself he would wait five minutes for a response, then head downtown.

His phone buzzed as soon as he put it back in his pocket. “Come on up.”

H
E STEPPED OFF
the elevator on the fifteenth floor: MarketSpin.com.

He didn’t want to admit it, but he was nervous . . . meeting an old girlfriend . . . an image of his youth that still from time to time danced naked through his imagination.

He remembered one of the first things she ever said to him, about how pleased she was to have such a tall advisor. Pretty cheeky for a master’s candidate to be talking like that in her first graduate meeting, walking the fine line between forthright and forward. But her beauty had been enough to make him catch his breath. So he had said, “I’m not
that
tall.”

“You’re taller than I am,” she had answered, “which I like.”

She was waiting for him in the reception area.

He was still taller, though the heels she was wearing made her taller, too.

“Peter Fallon”—she offered her hand—“it’s been a long time.”

His eyes flicked to her left hand. No hardware. Still single.

“As beautiful as ever,” he said.

“As?
More
. Come on.” She turned and walked ahead of him with that loping stride that he remembered as soon as he saw it.

She was wearing a green silk blouse, black skirt, black stockings. And the black pumps looked pretty expensive. Manolo, maybe, or Jimmy Choo.
Jimmy Choo?
The green complemented her auburn hair and popping red lipstick. The skirt did the same for her ass. The shoes gave her legs all the shape they would ever need.

As she led him past the studio, he glanced onto the set where she had interviewed Arsenault. The control room door was open. Somebody was rewinding a tape of Kathy. Playing and rewinding, playing and rewinding, and each time she said, “Whether this is the beginning of another stock market crash or just a correction . . . Whether this is the beginning of another . . . Whether this is . . .”

“Pretty weird to be hearing your own voice like that,” she said.

“You always had good pipes.” He tried not to sound like he was flirting.

She turned and gave him that smile. “Do you mean my legs or my voice?”

“Both.” What else could he say? It was the truth.

“Peter, sometimes I wonder why we ever broke up.” She took a right into her office. The furnishings were sleek, modern, lots of glass, chrome, leather. And the windows overlooked Lincoln Center.

“You’ve done well,” he said.

“Our network has done well. I’m one of the stars. You could call me one of the Money Honeys, but that term is taken. So call me one of the Bucks Babes, one of the Stock Market Sweeties, one of the Cash Queens.”

“Just so long as no one calls you a cash cow.”

“That would be sexist, but I’m that, too.”

He was glad that she sat behind her desk and not beside him on the sofa.

She leaned forward and put her chin in her hands and fixed him with her gaze. It had been her favorite gesture when she wanted to interest him. “What about you? No wedding band. Married? Divorced?”

“Divorced, soon to be married. To Evangeline.”

“Shucks.” She rocked in her chair and said, “Speaking of marriage, I hear you’re getting in to bed with Mr. Triple A.”

“Maybe. What’s it like?”

“I wouldn’t know. But you won’t be the first. What has he said to you?”

“He’s asked me to save America.”

She laughed. “He asks everyone that. He asked me when he pitched the interview for his Paul Revere Foundation.”

“So he’s the messiah type.”

“More like the narcissistic personality disorder type . . . pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, lack of empathy, all the usuals.”

“Does this mean I
won’t
be saving America?”

“Hard to say. Men like that can sometimes work miracles. Who ever thought he’d push this New Emission Bond business all the way to the Supreme Court?”

Peter didn’t say much to that. He didn’t know enough yet. So he tried a lame joke: “New Emission . . . do I have to change my pajamas afterward?”

“Ha-ha. Still the smart-ass. But what do you think? Pretty interesting.”

Peter didn’t know what to think, except that she wasn’t really offering much. Maybe she was just trying to find out what
he
knew. He shrugged and said, “Whatever . . . the Chinese crisis has him all upset.”

“It should,” she said. “They’re not going to buy at tomorrow’s T-bill auction, so the Dow was down three hundred yesterday. And it’s down”—she glanced at her computer—“another fifty today. It looks like it’s hitting some technical resistance, but—”

“Why the obsession with China?”

“They hold over a trillion dollars worth of our twelve-trillion-dollar debt.”

“Trillion? A thousand billion?”

“With a capital T. We buy everything from China, from baseball bats to computer parts. They take our dollars, then they buy our debt, so that we’ll have the cheap credit to buy more of their cheap goods, so they can take more of our dollars, so . . .”

“Economic symbiosis,” he said.

“More like the cycle of condensation to evaporation to rain. They have to stay in business with us because if we go down, their system dries up. But if we keep printing money, flooding the market in order to fight a recession or fund our pet projects or build a missile defense system to protect us from a Chinese attack that will never come, the dollar loses too much value against world currencies—”

“And the Chinese have to take a hard look at whether they want to keep buying?”

“Right. The immediate crisis comes as the Chinese make a political point by sitting out the auction tomorrow. And of course, the Supreme Court delivers their decision on the New Emission Bonds the day after tomorrow.”

“How does one affect the other?”

“Let Avid Austin tell you.”

“I guess this will be an interesting lunch, then,” said Peter.

Kathy leaned forward on her elbows. “Since you’re busy for lunch, how about having drinks with me later?”

“I’d love to, but—”

“I’m not coming on to you, Peter. Evangeline would find me and kill me.”

He laughed. “You got that right.”

“But come to the Harvard Club. Five o’clock. I’m meeting Arsenault’s accountant. Deep background.”

“On what?”

“Stay tuned.” She stood. They were done.

They shook hands. He considered giving her a hug but thought better of it. At the very least, he didn’t want Evangeline smelling someone else’s perfume on his lapel. That would mean way too much explaining.

T
HE
S
AN
R
EMO
on Central Park West: famous for the movie stars, fashion designers, and business celebrities who lived there, famous for the silhouette of two graceful towers rising ten stories above the main structure, famous as the place where the Ghostbusters fought the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

Austin Arsenault lived in the south tower.

“How do you want to work this?” Evangeline said as the elevator doors closed.

“By pushing the button?” said Peter.

“How do you want to work it with Arsenault? Sometimes you do the analysis and I do the emotional context. Sometimes, you pick up on the emotions while I’m the cold-eyed one.”

It was true, he thought. They really did complement each other, even in the wardrobes: he was wearing his blue blazer with a clean shirt and yellow tie. She had put on a sleeveless form-fitting yellow jersey with a matching sweater, blue slacks, pearl earrings, pearl necklace. Complementary, whether they’d planned it or not.

He said, “How about, you try to figure out what’s going on below the surface—”

“Okay. And you’ll—”

“I’ll just be as superficial as usual.”

The elevator stopped and the door popped open.

A butler greeted them in striped trousers and morning coat. He led them through an inner foyer, past a spectacular staircase that led up to the bedrooms, down a hallway to the living room.

Windows faced east across Central Park and south toward Midtown, but heavy drapes forced the eye from the view to the furnishings—the wing chairs, the antique mahogany side tables, the Oriental carpet, the paintings on the wall, including one that looked like an original Renoir.

Arsenault rose from a chair by the fireplace. “Mr. Fallon and Ms. Carrington. The man and woman of the hour.”

He seemed even sleeker in person, thought Evangeline. Silvered hair, smooth pink skin, double-breasted blue blazer, ascot. As he shook her hand, she felt the male energy, the confidence, the
smooth
, as she liked to call it.

Peter didn’t. He was looking at the monogram on the blazer. New York Yacht Club? And how much money did he spend for the Renoir? And why was he at home in the middle of the day, in the middle of a financial crisis?

Then another guy got up to greet them, a guy in a gray suit.

Evangeline shook his clammy hand, felt less energy, but she felt something. Doggedness? Relentlessness? The stooped posture said this one wasn’t afraid to hunch over a desk for as long as it took to get a job done. The widow’s peak showed he would comb his hair as he always had, male-pattern baldness be damned. The thin line of perspiration across his upper lip suggested he was a detail-sweater, even in the air-conditioned splendor of Arsenault’s co-op.

Who did he remind her of?
Nixon
. She had once shaken hands with Nixon, when he was living in New York after his exile: clammy hand, sweating, slouching a bit, and—

“This is Owen T. Magee, my attorney,” said Arsenault.

“Mr. Magee,” Peter offered his hand.

“Owen
T
. Magee,” said Arsenault. “Owen says the ‘T’ that rhymes with ‘Magee’ gives his name a meter that plays like a song in people’s heads.”

Magee laughed as if he didn’t especially like Austin’s joke. “Either that or I give them my card.” He pulled one out and offered it to Peter:
OWEN T. MAGEE, MAGEE & MAGEE, ESTATES, TRUSTS, AND TAXES, FLATIRON BUILDING, 175 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
.

“What the card doesn’t mention,” added Arsenault, “is a reputation for probity and discretion, fanatical attention to detail, glacial calm in the presence of the IRS, and stoic refusal to cede a nickel of a client’s money without a fight.”

“I also hear that he’s suing the government on your behalf,” said Peter.

“I told you he was thorough,” Arsenault said to Magee. “Now then, we have a very nice lunch, but first”—he snapped his fingers, and the butler came in with a tray, four glasses of white wine—“Chassagne-Montrachet 2006. I always like a good wine when I show off my money collection.”

“Money collection?” said Peter.

“I thought people kept their money collections in banks,” said Evangeline.

“I’m talking about money as art, Ms. Carrington. Money as history. Money as the physical expression of our national aspiration.”