Ghosts of Bergen County (25 page)

“Well?” She waited.

“No,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because I wouldn't. Because I love you.”

She held his gaze. Her eyes glistened for a single moment, reflected the afternoon sun.

“You really want to cry,” he said.

“I'm sorry.”

It occurred to him that she was sorry for a lot of things. So was he. He thought about fate, about those things you could affect and those things that affected you, but it was a circular reference, a self-referential loop, the concept too complicated. Philosophers asked questions they didn't have answers to.

“I messed up,” she said.

His first instinct was to deny it, but he couldn't bring himself to do so.

She gasped and buried her face on the sleeve of his T-shirt. She breathed. When she was done his shirtsleeve was dry. So were her eyes. Then she smiled in a way that made her look sad. “You're crying,” she said.

It was true, he realized, and the tears came at once, flooded his eyes and ran down his cheeks. He did that sometimes—cried—even before Catherine, before Mary Beth. She touched a finger to his cheek and sniffed a tear.

“I've made a mess of it,” she said.

“Look at us.” He held his hands out, pink palms toward the blue sky. “This isn't a mess.” He supposed his face was red, tear-streaked. He supposed it really was a mess. But maybe that was the point. Because they were outside, on the front porch, with a cat named Daisy, instead of inside, hidden in the bedroom behind the drawn shades. It was a start, getting to know the neighbor's cat, even if they didn't know which neighbor the cat belonged to.

“Yeah,” she said, “a couple of junkies.”

“A couple of
recovering
junkies.”

“A mess,” she said.

“A
good
mess.”

“Optimist.”

“Optimist?” He lifted his shirt and wiped his face. “
I'm
the one crying.”

“Can you take Friday off?”

“Sure. Though I might not have a job to take off from.”

She squinted at him.

He blinked.

“I can,” he said finally. “What's Friday?”

“We're going to Princeton.”

“Princeton?” he said. “What's there?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

It was Wednesday, and he hadn't been back to the Riverfront suite since Saturday.
Not feeling well
, went his e-mail to Lisa Becker on Monday morning.
How's Greg? How are the Groves?
But Ferko knew from the e-mail traffic how the Groves were: Prauer's binding term sheet committed a billion-one. The Groves were rich. Not distressed-retail-department-store rich. They were cash rich. They were out, too, could spend the rest of their lives on the Florida beach of their choice, nursing their millions. Each article on Grove Department Stores—and Ferko received them all through his e-mail alerts—touched on Roy's murder, possible motives, possible suspects. Most focused on the youngest son, Kyle, who had arrests for possession of cocaine and ecstasy, and one incident, widely reported, in which he'd thrown Roy off his yacht into the Gulf of Mexico. In the end Roy had declined to press charges. The article yesterday—in the
Journal
, which reported the agreement in principle between Riverfront and Grove—rehashed the family dynamics, and then quantified, based on unspecified family sources, how much Kyle stood to gain from Roy's murder. Twenty million dollars. Ferko figured the entire Grove clan was better off with Roy gone. Except Roy, of course.

Ferko poked his head into Lisa's office. “Hey!” he said.

“Welcome back!”

He continued to the kitchen for coffee and food.

Greg's office was dark. Weeks ago, when he arrived—first to visit, then to occupy (in a temporary, unofficial capacity, with office and laptop)—the alchemy at Riverfront shifted. Any sense of complacency that had previously existed was gone. Props were knocked down. Floors fell away. Ferko walked on joists, the footing treacherous, while George Cosler and Greg Fletcher formed a team. A basketball team. They went to the gym at lunch and played pickup, two on two, while Prauer went on vacation—to Alaska, some river a four-hour flight from Anchorage. The plane brought arriving campers and food and supplies once a week, and picked up departing campers and their refuse. There were cabins, a freestanding dining room and kitchen, outhouses. The camp was open four months a year. And yet there was a signal—maybe even a tower—and Prauer kept in touch the way he would on some diligence trip to Shanghai. His e-mails came at odd hours, even taking into account the time difference. It never got dark, of course, and Ferko imagined Prauer, his boundless energy, catching fish, eating fish, and never sleeping, fixated on Grove Department Stores from his remote and ever-sunny corner of America. The e-mails came to Ferko, Greg, and Lisa, in that order, and Cosler and Greg would come back from basketball, showered and shining, and log back in. Sometimes Greg proclaimed, “Whoa!” if Prauer attached photos, as he often did, of fish, hip-high, held by their gills by straining men in waders, behind whom stood strange trees and green hills, blue sky, water, preternatural colors, a landscape from another planet. Then Greg tapped his keys—the guy could type fast—and fired off a response to Prauer that wasn't copied to Ferko or Lisa. By the second week, the e-mails were coming to Greg, Ferko, and Lisa, in that order. Ferko had been passed that quickly.

He found Lisa in the breakout room, where she'd opened her laptop and stacked her Grove files. She'd put meetings on his calendar: ten o'clock with Greg, eleven o'clock with Greg and Prauer. Despite everything, they still expected Ferko to do things.

She glanced at his food—a bagel with cream cheese and a hunk of Prauer's salmon. Another filet—smoked and salted, garnished with capers and served with bagels and cream cheese—sat in the kitchen, largely ignored by the overindulged Riverfront staff. Since Prauer's vacation, the salmon—his trophies—appeared a couple of mornings a week. At first their appearance was met with unreserved enthusiasm. Then the novelty wore off, and more fish meant less eaten. It would sit in the kitchen, slabs like human thighs with forkfuls missing, until someone tossed it by the end of the day. If Prauer paid attention, he'd have diverted the fish to a shelter or food bank. As unpredictable as he was with his investment decisions, he was equally unimaginative with his magnanimity.

“You're better?” Lisa asked Ferko.

“In the pink,” he said, lifting the top of his bagel to reveal the fish beneath.

She made a sour face.

“Better,” he said. He capped the bagel and took a bite. This morning, in the mirror, he'd looked a bit gaunt. It was good to eat. He swallowed.

“What're we doing?” he asked.

She raised her eyebrows and waited.

“We have meetings,” he said.

“You're reporting on financing.”

“What does Prauer expect?”

“Seven fifty.”

“No fucking way.”

“At least,” she said. “You should've stuck around Saturday. Greg said it was possible.”

Ferko imagined it now—Greg, in Ferko's absence, swagging seven fifty, minimum, perhaps even suggesting it was Ferko's number, raising Prauer's expectations so that he'd accept the billion-plus price tag while still meeting his hurdle. The more debt Riverfront raised against the Grove assets, the better the return on investment. Worse, with a seven-fifty floor, Prauer would expect more debt—eight hundred or eight fifty. Each dollar of incremental debt was a dollar less he'd need to invest from Riverfront's funds, boosting returns. Ferko was being set up to fail. He supposed he deserved it.

“Fuck Greg,” Ferko said.

“I suggest you tell him that directly”—she glanced at her watch—“in twenty minutes.”

“No one's going to lend Grove five hundred. Four hundred's a stretch. The leveraged loan market is done. Prauer knows that. Even dickhead Greg knows that.”

She tsked him, stared at him with her hard eyes until they softened.

“Did I ever tell you,” she asked, “I wanted to be a schoolteacher?”

He put his elbows on the table and folded his hands. “I don't believe you have.”

“All growing up. Until my junior year of college.”

“What happened?”

“Money happened.”

Ferko pushed his chin forward and nodded. Money had happened to him, too. After college. The stock market was rising. The math wasn't difficult. Twenty percent returns meant you could double your money every four or five years. It worked until it didn't. Guys like Prauer succeeded through optimism and swagger and the uncanny ability to spot a bargain. When things got bad they put their heads down and kept buying. That was the value they added: determination and guts and the ability to convince rich people to trust them. The theory was dodgy—something bought at a given price today would be worth more tomorrow.

“You know what's nice?” she asked, but she didn't give Ferko a chance to answer. “There are teachers everywhere. You can be in New York or Wisconsin. I always imagined myself someplace north, a town on a river that freezes every winter.” She paused as though allowing herself to imagine it. “Not a city, but a town,” she said. “Maybe even a village. And the people who live there skate the river, from one town to the next. I think I read that in a book once.”

“Or heard it in a Joni Mitchell song.” It was an obscure reference, but it didn't faze her. He took another bite of his bagel and wiped his mouth with a napkin.

“
Village
makes it sound like there's no central heat,” he said. “Just a wood-burning stove. Or maybe you'd use coal. You could shovel coal into your potbelly stove.”

“Coal's dirty,” she said.

He nodded his agreement. “And there'd be no school system, no salary. You'd teach the village elders' children in exchange for beads and baskets and fish.” He removed the top of his bagel to reveal what was left of his salmon.

“Okay, a town, not a village. Someplace with historic buildings. But not
too
historic.”

“Sounds quaint.”

“And a Starbucks,” she said.

“The historic Starbucks?”

“They
love
those properties.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

She paused to shrug. “Exit strategy?” It was more question than statement.

“But
I'm
the one who's about to get thrown out on his ear,” he said.

Greg didn't show for their ten o'clock. Lisa walked Ferko through the deal.

“Financing contingency omitted,” she said.

“
Nice
,” Ferko said, but it wasn't a surprise. It was Prauer's MO, to allow himself no outs. It gave him an edge, which he used, even in a case like Grove, where the competition for the assets was thin.

After a time they had nothing left to say. Ferko stuck his head out into the hallway. Still no Greg. His office lights were out. They were equipped with motion sensors, which meant that no one had been there for a while.

“Maybe he's hanging out with Kyle Grove,” Lisa said.

“The murderer?”

“The Grove family bad boy.”

She pulled up an image on her laptop. Kyle Grove's blond hair fell past his collar. He wore a scruffy beard, black sunglasses. He looked like he belonged in Hollywood.

“You're obsessed with him, aren't you?” Ferko asked.

She shrugged. “Kyle and Greg are hanging together, growing their hair, getting tan on Daddy's yacht.”

“Dead Daddy's yacht,” Ferko said.

“Taking full advantage,” she said.

Greg finally appeared, on Bill Prauer's heels, in the conference room at five after eleven. Prauer had a pad of paper and a pen, and he sat at the head of the table. Greg had a file folder. He set it down and took the chair next to Lisa, at Prauer's right elbow. Greg swept the hair from his eyes, which displayed their usual indifference.

“Where are we?” Prauer asked.

Greg pushed his chair back, rested his elbows on his armrests, and made a tent with his fingers. He waited, with Prauer, for an answer, though there was nothing in Prauer's question or demeanor that indicated the question wasn't directed at Greg. In fact, it was Greg's question to answer. It was his deal. Yet he waited, and the longer he waited the longer the silence dragged. Seconds passed. Prauer raised his eyebrows and glanced at Ferko, when Lisa jumped in:

“We've designated Funds IV and V as buyers on a fifty-fifty—”

“I'm aware,” Prauer interrupted at a startling volume, “which funds we've committed.”

Silence, several moments' worth, after which Prauer said, “Financing,” at a more reasonable level. “We're here to talk about financing.”

There was another beat of silence before Ferko spoke:

“Can we take a step back?” His voice was weak, the cumulative weight of the past few days—the lack of drugs and the search for drugs, the arrest and the recovery. He imagined that he looked thin, pale, sitting alone on the window side of the conference table. “I've been out the past couple of days and I want to make sure I understand the expectation.”

“The expectation is we'll raise as much debt as possible on the best terms possible from third-party sources using the assets of the newly acquired company.” Prauer folded his hands on the table. “It's called a
leveraged
buyout.”

“The money's not there.”

“Bullshit. Money's pouring into our funds.”

“No one's lending. It's all sitting. Or flowing into equity.”

“Bullshit,” Prauer said again. “Who've you called?”

When Ferko didn't answer, Prauer said, “Who?” They stared at each other as if there were no one else in the room.