Treasures (37 page)

Presently, Martin came back toward her and beckoned. “Come outside to the hall for a minute.”

Surprised, she stood up and followed. “What is it? Is something wrong?”

Martin was glum. “I’m afraid there is, and I wanted to tell you before we go back to the table, in case anyone says something. People are generally tactful, but there might be somebody there who doesn’t know your name is Osborne. It’s about your brother, you see. No, no, nothing’s happened to him, for God’s sake! Except that there’s a leak in tomorrow’s papers. He’s to be indicted by the United States attorney. The news is all over Wall Street. I would have heard it if I hadn’t been in Boston all day.”

A wave of shock swept over her. “Indicted? For what?”

“I don’t know all the details. Insider trading, defrauding Internal Revenue. I’m not sure.”

Eddy! But he was so clever and so good! Surely this had to be a mistake, some sort of unjust accusation. Oh, poor Eddy!

Then, after the first few seconds, came another fright. “You’re not involved in anything with him, are you?”

Martin was indignant. “What a stupid question! I’m surprised at you. Me? An eighty-five-year-old firm like ours involved with a kid like him?”

“All right, it was a stupid question. I’m sorry. I’m just upset. I’m just horrified.”

“Honey, don’t cry here. Don’t let it show.”

She took a long, deep breath. Then very softly she asked, “Martin, if it’s true, what’s going to happen to him?”

“If it’s true,” Martin said grimly, “he’ll go to prison.”

C
HAPTER
F
OURTEEN

H
enry Rathbone was one of the most celebrated lawyers in the city and one of the most expensive, and he had counseled Eddy to keep calm and go to work as usual while relying on Henry to negotiate. Naturally, he had made no promises, but his general demeanor had suggested a modified optimism. And so, keeping that in mind, Eddy dressed himself that morning to his usual perfection, ate his usual breakfast, and was now seated at his desk with the usual pile of papers before him. But his gaze kept straying, first toward the sullen, dark Hudson on the one side and then back into the room, where a sullen, steely light slanted across the Sheraton bow-front chest beside the door.

Abruptly, the door opened, revealing Mrs. Evans in dismay.

“Mr. Osborne! There are two men here. They say they’re United States marshals, they showed me their badges, and they’re coming in, I couldn’t stop them, I don’t know what they want—”

Eddy stood up. “Let them in,” he said, and along with immediate awareness that his heart had begun to
pound, and that every pulse in his body was pounding with it, was the consciousness that this must be the moment when he must bear himself well.

Two men entered, men so ordinary as to be indescribable. They might have been selling insurance or vacuum cleaners. Eddy’s thoughts went helter-skelter.

“Mr. Osborne,” one said, “we have a warrant for your arrest.”

Arrest. The helter-skelter thoughts focused: But Rathbone said— These were paper proceedings, weren’t they? Things settled by words between lawyers, settled in offices, at desks and on telephones, not physically! Not taking your body. Arrest was
seizing.
Seizing your body.

He stammered. “What for? I mean—I don’t understand. There’s a mistake. My lawyer’s working on it right now.”

“You’ll be able to call your lawyer. But you’ll have to come along first.” The man extended a piece of paper. “Read the warrant.”

Eddy took it. Bold printed lettering and lines of typewritten sentences blurred toward a signature at the end. He handed it back unread. And a silence thrummed, rang, tingled in his ears.

“You’ll have to put these on,” the second man said.

Mrs. Evans was staring at the handcuffs. Her lips hung open, and her faded, neatly waved hair was rumpled.

“I’ll go with you,” Eddy said. “You don’t have to put those on me. You don’t understand, I’m not the sort of person who’ll make trouble. You don’t understand.”

“Make it easy for yourself,” the man told him. “Put out your hands.”

Oh, God, Eddy thought, not through the main door! Not to be marched past all those desks and all those eyes.

“Can we go out the back door?” His voice faltered badly; he was furious at his damned voice.

You must bear yourself well, you’re Vernon Edward Osborne, and you’ll straighten out this crazy business.

“There’s a private entrance,” Mrs. Evans said, weeping now. “It’s not the way you came in. Please,” she pleaded, “it’s quicker that way, anyhow.”

Eddy’s hands just hung at the ends of his too-stiff arms. There was no place to put them. Walking around like that, you looked ridiculous. Mrs. Evans leapt for the Burberry raincoat that was always kept in the closet and draped it over his awkward hands. She reached up and kissed him, her wet nose brushing his jaw.

“God bless you, Mr. Osborne. He’s a good man,” she warned the intruders. “Be gentle with him,” she said fiercely.

“Don’t worry, lady.”

So Eddy departed from the offices of Osborne and Company with one man ahead of him and one behind him. A plain black sedan was parked below, and no one in the hurrying crowd on the sidewalk saw the three men get into the backseat and drive away.

When they had traveled a few blocks, Eddy brought himself to ask where they were going.

“The United States Courthouse at Foley Square.”

It was not a jail, anyway. Or did they have a jail there?

He knew nothing of the law. How should I know? he asked himself. I was never in trouble, I hardly ever got a traffic ticket. This is rotten. Rotten. A man like me in handcuffs. Me.

Helpless because of his bound hands, he had to be assisted from the car. Mechanically, he moved through the broad halls past many doors; he had impressions such as one receives when in a moving car, a speeding blur of people clustered in corridors, waiting for something, of poor-seeming people, of brisk people with important briefcases, of body smells, odors of rain-wet woolens, stale cigarette smoke, of washing powder where someone was mopping the floor, and finally, of police in a room with green-white lights that glared over scuff marks on the walls and over brown scuffed furniture.

When they removed the handcuffs, he rubbed his wrists, not to ease pain, for there had been none, but rather to remove the feel of contact with something filthy. They held his splayed fingers firmly onto an inked pad; they stood him with a placard bearing a number on his chest and took his picture as if he were a rapist or a mugger, as if he had abused little boys or murdered his wife. As if he were not Vernon Edward Osborne. And through it all he did not speak a word, but promptly did what he was told to do while his heart’s hammering did not abate, and he thought that perhaps it might stop or rupture something in his chest, and then all this would be over. When he had to urinate, somebody went with him to the men’s room. For a moment in there he was sure he was going to vomit, but, mercifully, the sensation passed. They led him at last to a room where there
was a telephone so that he could call Rathbone. Rathbone was already on the way. Somebody asked him whether he wanted to make any more calls, and with the asking, which to his inexperience seemed to be an unexpected kindness, he went all soft, fearful that tears might gather in his eyes. And he declined. Besides, he was not ready yet to talk to Pam; he needed time to figure out how he was going to say that the thing he had feared, while denying his fear, had happened.

In this room where people were coming in and out, he could see into more rooms and out into the bustling halls. What a place of misery and contention was here! Why would anybody ever want to be a judge or a lawyer or to perform any labor in such a place of misery? But when Henry Rathbone came in, Eddy put on the face that the world knew best, and was jocular Eddy Osborne again, whom nothing fazed.

“Well, Henry, here I am. What happens next, the guillotine?”

“No, no, Eddy. Don’t worry, we’ll have you out on bail in no time. You’ll go home and sleep in your own bed tonight. Come with me.”

“Where to?”

“We have to appear before a United States magistrate. He sets the bail. The U.S. prosecutor will be there too.”

Rathbone was short, not much higher than Eddy’s shoulder, and yet he felt like a child beside him. For Rathbone had authority in this place, and his walk showed it. That’s the way I used to walk through the
bullpen at Osborne and Company, Eddy said to himself, and then realized that he had already said “used to.”

The magistrate sat high in a small courtroom, wearing his black robes. Even in that dingy, unimpressive room he looked—well, magisterial. He was supposed to, wasn’t he? Perhaps it was the robe that did it. The United States attorney was a handsome man whose face would have been striking on a coin. It was a vote-getting face, perfect on television. And Eddy stood waiting and watching while the three men talked. It had begun to rain harder; a downpour sluiced long runnels on the dirty window. In spite of its fluorescent bulbs the room darkened, and to Eddy the effect of darkness was ominous. On the other hand, cheerful sunlight would have mocked him.

“The charges,” said the handsome prosecutor, “warrant high bail, Your Honor. This man is charged on five separate counts involving, so far, more than three hundred million dollars. So far.”

“Your Honor,” responded Rathbone, “my client is not a hardened criminal. This is a first offense. If it is an offense at all, which I certainly do not concede.”

“Your Honor,” said the prosecutor, “I would like to ask that bail be set at five million dollars.”

The magistrate’s eyebrows went up, black eyebrows in a ruddy forehead. He looks as if he likes his Scotch, thought Eddy. On the other hand, it may just be high blood pressure. His mind wandered again. Now the rain was smearing patterns in the grime, circles and curlicues.

“That is most excessive, Your Honor,” Rathbone was
arguing. “Mr. Osborne has a home and a wife. He has relatives. His sister is married to one of the most prominent men in the city. He has roots. He’s not going to run away.”

“That can’t be guaranteed, Your Honor,” protested the United States attorney.

“It can, Your Honor. I would ask that reasonable bail be set. One hundred thousand dollars would be reasonable.”

“Your Honor, in the light of the charges, that makes no sense. It is out of proportion, entirely out of proportion.”

Rathbone persisted. “He is not going to flee, Your Honor. Can we not compromise?”

“Your Honor, we are poles apart.”

“Well,” said the magistrate, “we can’t be here all day over this.”

The man looked tired. Again, Eddy thought, I wouldn’t take a job like this one no matter what it paid, and come to think of it, it doesn’t pay much. And there was a long silence while the magistrate pondered.

At last he made his decision. “Bail will be two million dollars.”

“May I consult with my client for a moment?” asked Rathbone. They went to the back of the room. “Have you got it? Can you get it?” he whispered.

“God no, you know I’m strapped. All the accounts were in Pam’s name.” Thank God he had been smart enough to do that.

“Your relatives? Berg? We could try a bail bondsman, but it would take time. Red tape and time.”

Eddy thought. He hated to ask Martin. Forever after he would be miserable in Martin’s presence, he would shrink. It was a bad thing to be beholden to a relative, even to one whom he liked well enough.

“The money would mean very little to your brother-in-law.”

Eddy was silent.

“You know it would,” Rathbone repeated softly.

Eddy looked off into the thick, smoky air beyond the window, and then back at Rathbone. “I dread asking,” he said, and heard, despising it, the tone of appeal in his voice.

“I understand. Would it be easier if I were to ask instead?”

“It would help,” Eddy replied with some relief. Then a thought struck him. “What if he isn’t in?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll track him down. Berg knows me. At least, we’ve met more than once.”

“Thank you, Henry. Thank you very much.” And then a second thought struck dread, and he had to ask, “Do you suppose you could try to find my wife too? She’s at her mother’s in the country. Wait. Here’s the number. Do you think you could sort of gently, sort of gradually, break the news to her? I never told her. I should have. She could have prepared herself, the way you prepare for a death when someone’s been sick for a long time. This is like someone’s dying of a heart attack with no warning. But I never wanted her to lose faith in me. Who knew it would come to this? Oh, this is the worst. It’s killing me to think of Pam getting this news.”

Rathbone nodded sympathetically. “I’ll take care of it. And you take it easy, Eddy.”

When Rathbone left, Eddy remained where he was, gazing out of the window at nothing, yet too much aware of the two men in the front of the room, the magistrate still on the bench, and aware, too, of another man near the door, some sort of guard, he supposed, to make sure that Eddy didn’t try to escape.

It seemed interminable hours, but actually it was only a little more than twenty minutes before Rathbone returned and at once addressed the court. Bail had been arranged and would be delivered within the hour.